‘Common Man’ Joe Smith Jr. Aims for Another Uncommon Outcome vs. Dmitry Bivol

Published

5 years ago

March 7, 2019

Joe Smith Jr. knows what much of the world thinks of him, in a boxing sense. He was dismissed as a “common” man by future Hall of Famer Bernard Hopkins before they squared off on Dec. 17, 2016, which undoubtedly was as true then as it is now. Even Smith (a common name if ever there was one) acknowledged that, as a fighter, he was and is more blue-collar than blue-blood, a card-carrying union member of Local 66 on Long Island, N.Y., whose day job as a common laborer – which he still holds – involves such working man’s chores as pouring concrete, digging trenches, laying sheetrock, power-washing septic tanks and knocking down walls with a sledgehammer. He does that for eight to 10 hours a day before heading to the gym at 6 p.m. to train for an upcoming bout.

It’s an exhausting schedule, and one that Smith would just as soon whittle down when and if his personal circumstances allow. But supposedly common fighters, like all common men, must plan for the future while taking nothing for granted in the present.

“Hell, I’m human,” the 29-year-old Smith (24-2, 20 KOs), who will be in a familiar underdog role when he challenges WBA light heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol (15-0, 11 KOs) in the DAZN-streamed main event Saturday night at the Turning Stone Resort Casino in Verona, N.Y., said in a lengthy profile in The Ring a couple of years ago. “Every day I go to work I want to leave. I just push myself to stay as long as I can. I keep myself motivated to go past that pain. But no one can beat down a hard-hat guy who can take anything.

“There isn’t a day that goes by when I’m not asking myself, `What the hell am I doing here?’ since I have boxing. But I do see how my day job (which pays $38 an hour, with benefits) works well with my night job as a fighter. I don’t really think I would be able to do one without the other.”

Maybe, just maybe, if Smith again confounds the odds-makers – Bivol is a -2500 wagering choice, meaning you’d have to put up $2,500 to win $100, while Smith is +1000, which would yield a $1,000 return on a $100 bet – he can finally afford to tell his Local 66 bosses that he is turning in his sledgehammer to concentrate on boxing full-time. He almost certainly will receive a payday far in excess of his previous high of $400,000 for the Hopkins fight, although the Oneida Nation Gaming Commission is notoriously hesitant to release such figures unless or until it is absolutely necessary. In any case, taxes and fees paid to his promoters, manager, trainer and other support-crew members will reduce his end by about half, or maybe even a little bit more.

“For a second, I thought about leaving construction, but that’s not me and who I am,” Smith said after his first six-figure payday ($150,000), and first signature victory, a first-round knockout of the heavily favored Andrzej Fonfara on June 18, 2016, in Fonfara’s hometown of Chicago, a bout that was nationally televised by NBC. “Boxing is such a crazy game that you could go months and months without a fight. How will I pay my bills? How will I get the things that I want and do things for my family? I wasn’t about to change everything, because working construction and doing all of the things I did got me here. Why change something that isn’t broken?”

Smith knows about things than can and do break, like jaws, which might explain his hesitancy to take a leap of faith and bet big on himself as a fighter who everyone agrees is pretty good, and maybe even a bit better than that, but not necessarily elite.

Riding high after his surprise knockout of Hopkins – which, in retrospect, might not have been quite the shocker it appeared to be at first glance – there was talk of Smith snagging a big-money title shot if he got past Sullivan Barrera, no easy task but certainly viewed as doable in light of the way he had pounded Hopkins out of the ring, where he was counted out in the eighth round by referee Jack Reiss. This was not the way Hopkins, who had vowed that the bout with Smith would be the finale of his 28-year pro career, win, lose or draw, had imagined his sendoff would end. He was, after all, a legendary fighter who knew what it was like to lose, but had never lost inside the distance.

Against Barrera, Smith started strongly, flooring the Cuban in the first round and nearly closing the deal with a follow-up barrage. But Barrera recovered quickly and went on to win a unanimous, 10-round decision whose immediate effect was to reduce Smith from flavor of the month to, again, another Average Joe. Shortly thereafter it was revealed that Smith suffered a broken jaw in the second round and would need to undergo surgery. It marked the second time Smith had had his jaw broken during a bout, the first a fourth-round KO loss to Eddie Caminero in 2010.

Since his momentum-blunting setback to Barrera, Smith has fought just once, a first-round blowout of 39-year-old journeyman Melvin Russell on June 30 of last year. That gimme victory probably should not have been enough to boost him into a matchup with Bivol, who is arguably the best light heavyweight in the world at this juncture, but Smith does have those signature wins over Fonfara and Hopkins. It also didn’t hurt that the unification matchup of Bivol and IBF 175-pound champion Artur Beterbiev (13-0, 13 KOs), which seemed to be a done deal in January, fell apart when Bivol signed a co-promotional deal with Matchroom Boxing that puts his fights on DAZN while Beterbiev cast his lot with Top Rank and ESPN. Since Bivol needed to fight somebody on March 9, Smith, an available pinch-hitter, was offered his dream shot.

“Joe’s been waiting for a while for a world title fight,” said Smith’s longtime promoter, Joe DeGuardia of Star Boxing, who has entered into a co-promotional arrangement with Matchroom’s Eddie Hearn to advance the self-professed common man’s ring career. “Joe has made the most of his opportunities. He did it against Fonfara, he did it against Bernard Hopkins. I’m looking forward to him doing it against Dmitry Bivol.”

Some have compared Smith to other working-class heroes such as the “Cinderella Man,” James J. Braddock, who went from being a longshoreman during the Great Depression to scoring one of boxing’s most memorable upsets when he outpointed heavyweight champion Max Baer in 1935, and “Irish” Micky Ward, he of the three unforgettable encounters with Arturo Gatti. The stories of both Braddock and Ward were turned into well-received movies, in keeping with Hollywood’s fascination with supposed nobodies who rise up and, when it counts, become somebodies. Who knows, maybe Smith, should he take down Bivol, will get a similar big-screen treatment somewhere down the line.

Then again, maybe not. There are those who insist that Smith got Fonfara out of there with a lucky punch, and that he did to Hopkins what no one else had ever done mostly because Joe was 27, young and strong, while B-Hop was 29 days shy of his 52^nd birthday, had not fought in 25 months and chose Smith as his goodbye present to himself as an active fighter only because he didn’t think he was all that good to begin with.

“He thought I was nobody dangerous,” Smith said of how he believes he was perceived by Hopkins. “But we watched videos of him and we just knew that he had nothing for me. We saw he didn’t have much power or anything; he was just slick. We knew we just had to keep the pressure on him and eventually he would fold.”

In retrospect, Hopkins sort of agrees. He acknowledged pushing the envelope a bit too far, the result of being overly confident that he was somehow exempt from the ravages of the aging process.

“All credit to Joe Smith, he did what he had to do, but it was also Father Time helping him,” Hopkins told me of a fight he now realizes he was perhaps unwise to have taken. “If you stay in this game, and it’s a hard game, time will defeat you every time. I have no regrets about how my career went, but I stayed in the game too long. I admit it.”

So, does Hopkins, now an executive with Golden Boy, believe Smith is capable of reaching down into his trick bag and pulling out another shocker?

“Joe Smith is fighting a really tough guy, a young guy (Bivol is 28) who has a lot of skills and can really fight,” Hopkins said. “Although Joe is not on his level, he does have a really good punch. If you have that, you always have a puncher’s chance. I do expect Joe Smith to be at his best that night, but I really don’t see him winning that fight unless it’s by a knockout.”

This is where Joe Smith Jr.’s day job and night job tend to coalesce. In daylight hours, he might be a lunch-pail-carrying, hard-hat-wearing Everyman, but there are occasions when he’s asked to whack away at walls or whatever with a destructive tool of his trade. This Saturday night, at the Turning Stone, he will carry a sledgehammer of sorts in each fist, with which he will do his best to tear down the Kyrgyzstan-born, Russia-based Bivol, against whom he really should have little chance of adding to his list of unlikely victims.

But power is the great equalizer in boxing, capable of turning certain defeat into late victory in a way that football and basketball teams, trailing by insurmountable margins with just minutes remaining, can’t. Joe Smith Jr. has been written off before. He doesn’t listen to the doubters and the naysayers because, well, why should he?

And if things don’t go as he hopes they will, there’s always Local 66 to provide a safety net of sorts to someone who never has been reluctant to put in an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.

Bernard Fernandez is the retired boxing writer for the Philadelphia Daily News. He is a five-term former president of the Boxing Writers Association of America, an inductee into the Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Atlantic City Boxing Halls of Fame and the recipient of the Nat Fleischer Award for Excellence in Boxing Journalism and the Barney Nagler Award for Long and Meritorious Service to Boxing.

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Ramon Cardenas Channels Micky Ward and KOs Eduardo Ramirez on ProBox

Published

9 hours 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 liver the 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 time. 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

2 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

4 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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