NEW CHAMP TRAINED TO WIN…Borges

Published

13 years ago

August 28, 2011

Ron Borges

teddy

In the end, as always, the fighter won the fight but in the case of Alexander Povetkin it was the trainer who showed him how.

Not just how to box, which is obviously essential for a prize fighter, but how to be a professional. That’s what won Povetkin the portion of the WBA heavyweight title not owned by Wladimir Klitschko Saturday night in Erfurt, Germany. What won for him was that when he needed to most, he became a Professional.

The former Olympic gold medalist had ample reason not to act like one after he stepped into the ring with former world champion Ruslan Chagaev but Teddy Atlas wouldn’t let him. Until Atlas showed up in Russia three weeks and two days before the fight, Povetkin’s training camp was a shambles. It was also a joke but not a funny one.

He was supposed to have been in northern New Jersey training with Atlas for eight weeks but the people around him didn’t get that done for whatever reason and Atlas had broadcast responsibilities with ESPN2’s Friday Night Fights that made it impossible for him to come to Russia.

This was known by both sides for months but in the end somebody forgot. Or somebody chose to gamble with Povetkin’s future. Whatever they did, they left the fighter and his trainer with 23 days to prepare for a southpaw former champion who, if nothing else, knows who he is.

Povetkin could have used the absence of a full camp, the resultant conditioning issues, Atlas’ late arrival and more than a few other things to provide him with an excuse to lose. He made another choice, which is what life is. Its choices.

Several days before the fight Povetkin was quoted saying, “I could knock him out or he could knock me out.’’ It was not what Atlas wanted to hear – even though anyone who has ever been involved in a heavyweight title fight understood the reality of that statement.

He let Povetkin know it by reminding him as they boarded a plane from Russia to Germany of what he had told him when they first met. Atlas asked Povetkin if he remembered what he’d said was the most important thing he needed to develop if he was going to become a world champion.

“Be a professional,’’ Povetkin said.

“That’s right,’’ Atlas replied. “That’s what you’re going to be Saturday night.’’

The night before the fight Atlas had trouble sleeping, worried about the things trainers worry about but worried about more than that. He too, had ample excuses to give in to defeat. In fact, he had ample excuses not to have even shown up in the first place, having been told one thing by the people around Povetkin while living a far different reality.

For a time it got to him but in the end he did not what a professional does but what a human being does. He was there for his fighter even when the wise choice – the Professional’s choice – would have been to avoid the whole thing. Saturday night Povetkin was the beneficiary of that humanity in a sport where it is in short supply.

Doubt is a common resident of the prize ring. Doubt is there far more often than most fighters will ever admit. It is a natural part of the landscape, a year-round resident of gyms and arenas around the world.

There is an inherent danger in boxing not only of injury and unconsciousness but also of humiliation. To lose a sporting event is one thing. To lose a fight while standing half naked in front of thousands of people is something quite different.

For most fighters it is the potential for embarrassment they fear more than defeat or injury. After all that had gone on in Povetkin’s fractious training camp the door was open for him to give in however and just let that happen.

The morning of the fight Atlas sensed this so when he came down to meet Povetkin in the hotel he said, “You’re ready to be a professional today. Now let’s go become a champion.’’

Alexander Povetkin, who soon would be alone on a stage far bigger than he thought it would be when he was a boy in a small Russian village dreaming of being heavyweight champion, nodded in agreement. He believed he would be a professional because his trainer, who had taught him what that meant, told him he was one.

And unlike a lot of other people in his world, his trainer didn’t lie.

As Atlas sat up all night he came to a decision. He had a well thought out game plan of how to beat Chagaev, who was himself a Professional Atlas respected. But he decided sometime in the middle of the night he would make a slight shift.

“They don’t think Sasha is a boxer,’’ Atlas said to himself. “So tomorrow we box this guy.’’

It was not a total departure from the plan, just a minor alteration. So he told Povetkin instead of starting slowly, as he so often had in the past, he would put something on Chagaev early so that he would be wary of seeing that again later. Then he would box from the outside, slipping punches, pot-shoting Chagaev, “keeping behind him.’’

“I never told one of my fighters to do that before,’’ Atlas recalled later, after Povetkin’s hand had been raised following a unanimous decision that was not particularly close. “I wanted Chagaev to have to chase Sasha.’’

He did with little success. Yet around the sixth round Povetkin, perhaps the doubts about his conditioning whispering in his ear, began to flag a bit. He seemed to slow down and Chagaev sensed it. It was then that the two years spent with Atlas in gyms around New Jersey, often just the two of them working alone on small details, showed.

Even Povetkin’s German promoters, who have been highly critical of Atlas much of the time because he wouldn’t continence what he believed were unwise choices, conceded that during that sixth round they saw something from Povetkin they had never seen before.

He was slipping punches, making Chagaev miss, turning defense into offense and then getting back to a safe distance. He was a boxer but he had become more than that. He was a Professional now, a fighter refusing to give in to doubt or to take the open road of easy escape in excuses for defeat.

In any walk of life there is no higher praise for a man than to hear, “He’s a professional.’’ Saturday night Povetkin was just that. He was what Atlas has long been. Because of it what Atlas promised him that first day was delivered. The Professional became The Champion.

Standing behind him, a smile on his face for the first time in months, stood another professional, a trainer of prize fighters who trains not just the body but the mind.

Whether he’ll ever stand there again who knows? Atlas has been forced to deal with many unnecessarily difficult circumstances in the two years he has worked with Povetkin. They were not of the fighter’s making but they were the kind of difficulties and deceits that caused Atlas to walk away from training and into a broadcast booth, where he is one of boxing’s best and most controversial analysts because he does there what he did with Povetkin, years ago.

Atlas tells you the truth, even when you don’t want to hear it. Because he did he made Povetkin a Professional and The Professional made Atlas the trainer of his second heavyweight champion. Fair trade.

In the end, Alexander Povetkin had to block out the doubts, listen to Atlas’ instructions and execute the plan. No trainer wins without that. But the fighter didn’t win alone either.

Not by a long shot.

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Ron Borges

Avila Perspective, Chap. 289: East LA, Claressa Shields and More

Published

1 day ago

July 25, 2024

David A. Avila

Avila-Perspective-Chap-289-East-L.A.-A-Fight-Town-Claressa-Shields-and-More

Avila Perspective, Chap. 289: East LA, Claressa Shields and More

East Los Angeles has long been a haven for some of the best fighters around if you can keep them out of trouble. For every Oscar De La Hoya or Seniesa Estrada there are thousands derailed by crime, drugs or drinking.

Boxing has always been a favorite sport of East L.A. Every family has an uncle or two who boxes.

On Friday, 360 Promotions’ Omar Trinidad (15-0-1) fights Viktor Slavinskyi (15-2-1) in the main event at Commerce Casino, in Commerce, CA. UFC Fight Pass will stream the fight card.

The City of Commerce used to be part of East L.A. until 1960 when it incorporated. It’s still considered to be part of East Los Angeles, but informally.

Plenty of fighters come out of East L.A. but few make it all the way like De La Hoya and Estrada. Will Trinidad be the one?

The first world champion from East L.A. or “East Los” as some call it, was Solly Garcia Smith back in the late 1800s. Others were Richie Lemos, Art Frias and Joey Olivo. There is also 1984 Olympic gold medalist Paul Gonzalez.

Once again 360 Promotions brings its popular brand of fights to the area. On this fight card includes two female bouts. One features Roxy Verduzco (1-0) the former amateur star fighting Colleen Davis (3-1-1) in a featherweight fight.

All that action takes place on Friday.

Elite Boxing

The next day, also in East L.A., Elite Boxing stages another boxing card at Salesian High School located at 960 S. Soto Street in the Boyle Heights area of East Los Angeles.

Elite Boxing has promoted several successful boxing cards at the Catholic high school grounds. The area is saturated by many of the best eateries in Los Angeles. Don’t take my word for it. Check it out yourself and grab some of that delicious food.

Boxing has long been a favorite sport of anyone who lives in East L.A. It’s a fight town equal to Philadelphia, Brooklyn or Detroit. There’s something different about the area. For more than 100 years some of the best fighters continue to come out of its boxing gyms. Some will be performing on these club shows.

For tickets or information go to www.eliteboxingusa.com

Claressa Shields in Detroit

Speaking of fight towns, pound-for-pound best Claressa Shields who won two Olympic Gold Medals in boxing, moves up another weight division to tackle the WBC heavyweight world champion Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse on Saturday, July 27, at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, Michigan.

DAZN will stream the heavy-duty fight card.

Shields (14-0) cleaned out the super welterweight, middleweight and super middleweight divisions and now wants to add the big girls to her conquests. She will be facing Canada’s Lepage-Joanisse (7-1) who holds the WBC belt.

The last time Shields gloved up was more than a year ago when she fought Maricela Cornejo. Don’t blame Shields. She loves to fight. She loves to win. The last time Shields lost a fight was in the amateurs and that was three presidential administrations ago.

Shields doesn’t lose.

I wonder if Las Vegas even takes bets on her fights?

The only fight she may have been an underdog was against Savannah Marshall who was the last opponent to defeat her. And that was in 2012 in China. When they met as pros two years ago, Shields avenged her loss with a blistering attack.

Don’t get Shields mad.

Perhaps her toughest foe as a pro was in her pro debut when she clashed with Franchon Crews-Dezurn in Las Vegas. It was four rounds of fists and fury as the two pounded each other on the undercard of Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev in November 2016.

That was a ferocious debut for both female pugilists.

Assisting Shields on this fight card will be several intriguing male bouts. One guy you should pay special attention is Tito Mercado (15-0, 14 KOs) a super lightweight prospect from Pomona, California.

Many excellent fighters have come out of Pomona including Sugar Shane Mosley, Shane Mosley Jr., Alberto Davila and Richie Sandoval who just passed away this week.

Sandoval was best known for his 15-round war with Philadelphia’s Jeff Chandler for the bantamweight world title in 1984. Read the story by Arne K. Lang on this link: https://tss.ib.tv/boxing/featured-boxing-articles-boxing-news-videos-rankings-and-results/81467-former-world-bantamweight-champion-richie-sandoval-passes-away-at-age-63 .

Fights to Watch

Fri. UFC Fight Pass 7 p.m. Omar Trinidad (15-0-1) vs Viktor Slavinskyi (15-2-1).

Sat. ESPN+ 12:30 p.m. Joe Joyce (16-2) vs Derek Chisora (34-13).

Sat. DAZN 3 p.m. Claressa Shields (14-0) vs Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse (7-1), Michel Rivera (25-1) vs Hugo Roldan (22-2-1); Tito Mercado (15-0) vs Hector Sarmiento (21-2).

Omar Trinidad photo by Lina Baker

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Arne’s Almanac: Jake Paul and Women’s Boxing, a Curmudgeon’s Take

Published

2 days ago

July 24, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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Jake Paul can fight more than a little. The view from here is that he would make it interesting against any fringe contender in the cruiserweight division. However, Jake’s boxing acumen pales when paired against his skill as a flim-flam artist.

Jake brought a 9-1 record into last weekend’s bout with Mike Perry. As noted by boxing writer Paul Magno, Jake’s previous opponents consisted of “a You Tuber, a retired NBA star, five retired MMA stars, a part-time boxer/reality TV star, and two undersized and inactive fall-guy boxers.”

Mike Perry, a 32-year-old Floridian, was undefeated (6-0, 3 KOs) as a bare-knuckle boxer after forging a 14-8 record in UFC bouts. In pre-fight blurbs, Perry was billed as the baddest bare knuckle boxer of all time, but against Jake Paul he proved to have very unrefined skills as a conventional boxer which Team Paul undoubtedly knew all along. Perry lasted into the eighth round in a one-sided fight that could have been stopped a lot sooner.

Jake Paul is both a boxer and a promoter. As a promoter, he handles Amanda Serrano, one of the greatest female boxers in history. That makes him the person most responsible (because the buck stops with him) for the wretched mismatch in last Saturday’s co-feature, the bout between Serrano and Stevie Morgan.

Morgan, who took up boxing two years ago at age 33, brought a 14-1 record. Nicknamed the Sledgehammer, she had won 13 of her 14 wins by knockout, eight in the opening round. However, although she resides in Florida, all but one of those 13 knockouts happened in Colombia.

“We found that in Colombia there were just more opportunities for women’s boxing than in the United States,” she told a prominent boxing writer whose name we won’t mention.

The truth is that, for some folks, Colombia is the boxing equivalent of a feeder lot for livestock, a place where a boxer can go to fatten their record. The opportunities there were no greater than in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1995. It was there that Peter McNeeley prepped for his match with Mike Tyson with a 6-second knockout of professional punching bag Frankie Hines. (Six seconds? So it would be written although no one seems to have been there to witness it.)

Serrano vs Morgan was understood to be a stay-busy fight for Amanda whose rematch with Katie Taylor was postponed until November. Stevie Morgan, to her credit, answered the bell for the second round whereas others in her situation would have remained on the stool and invented an injury to rationalize it. Thirty-eight seconds later it was all over and Ms. Morgan was free to go home and use her sledgehammer to do some light dusting.

The Paul-Perry and Serrano-Morgan fights played out in a sold-out arena in Tampa before an estimated 17,000. Those without a DAZN subscription paid $64.95 for the livestream. Paul’s next promotion, where he will touch gloves with 58-year-old Mike Tyson (unless Iron Mike pulls a Joe Biden and pulls out; a capital idea) with Serrano-Taylor II the semi-main, will almost certainly rake in more money than any other boxing promotion this year.

Asked his opinion of so-called crossover boxing by a reporter for a college newspaper, the venerable boxing promoter Bob Arum said, “It’s not my bag but folks who don’t like it shouldn’t get too worked up over it because no one is stealing from anybody.” True enough, but for some of us, the phenomenon is distressing.

—

The next big women’s fight happens Saturday in Detroit where Claressa Shields seeks a world title in a third weight class against WBC heavyweight belt-holder Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse.

A two-time Olympic gold medalist, undefeated in 14 fights as a pro, Shields is very good, arguably the best female boxer of her generation which makes her, arguably, the best female boxer of all time. But turning away Lepage-Joanisse (7-1, 2 KOs) won’t elevate her stature in our eyes.

Purportedly 17-4 as an amateur, the Canadian won her title in her second crack at it. Back in August of 2017, she challenged Cancun’s Alejandra Jimenez in Cancun and was stopped in the third round. Entering the bout, Lepage-Joanisse was 3-0 as a pro and had never fought a match slated for more than four rounds.

Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse

True, on the women’s side, the heavyweight bracket is a very small pod. A sanctioning body has to make concessions to harness a sanctioning fee. Nonetheless, how absurd that a woman who had answered the bell for only 11 rounds would be deemed qualified to compete for a world title. (FYI: Alejandra Jimenez was purportedly born a man. She left the sport with a 12-0-1 record after her win over Franchon Crews Dazurn was changed to a no-contest when she tested positive for the banned steroid stanozolol.)

Following her defeat to Jimenez, Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse, now 29 years old, was out of action for six-and-a-half years. When she returned, she was still a heavyweight, but a much slender heavyweight. She carried 231 pounds for Jimenez. In her most recent bout where she captured the vacant WBC title with a split decision over Argentina’s Abril Argentina Vidal, she clocked in at 173 ¼. (On the distaff side, there’s no uniformity among the various sanctioning bodies as to what constitutes a heavyweight.)

Claressa Shields doesn’t need Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse to reinforce her credentials as a future Hall of Famer. She made the cut a long time ago.

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Former World Bantamweight Champion Richie Sandoval Passes Away at Age 63

Published

4 days ago

July 22, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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Richie Sandoval, who won the WBA and lineal bantamweight title in one of the biggest upsets of the 1980s and then, not quite two years later, suffered near-fatal injuries in a title defense, has passed away at the age of 63.

News circulated fast in the Las Vegas boxing community on Monday, July 22, the grapevine actuated by a tweet from Hall of Fame matchmaker Bruce Trampler: “Boxing and the Top Rank family lost one of our own last night in the passing of former WBA bantamweight champion Richie Sandoval. It hurts personally and professionally to know that Richie is gone at age 63. RIP campeon.”

Details are vague but the cause of death was apparently a sudden heart attack that Sandoval experienced while visiting the Southern California home of his son of the same name.

Richie Sandoval put the LA County community of Pomona, California, on the boxing map before Shane Mosley came along and gave the town a more frequently-cited mention in the sports section of the papers. He came from a fighting family. An older brother, Albert “Superfly” Sandoval, became a big draw at LA’s fabled Olympic Auditorium while building a 35-2-1 record that included a failed bid to capture Lupe Pintor’s world bantamweight title.

Richie was a member of the 1980 U.S. Olympic boxing team that was stranded when U.S. President Jimmy Carter (and many other world leaders) boycotted the event as a protest against Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan.

As a pro, Sandoval’s signature win was a 15^th-round stoppage of Jeff Chandler. They fought on April 7, 1984 in Atlantic City. Chandler was making the tenth defense of his world bantamweight title.

Despite being a heavy underdog, Sandoval dominated the fight, winning almost every round until the referee stepped in and waived it off. Chandler, who was 33-1-2 heading in and had avenged his lone defeat, never fought again.

Sandoval made two successful defenses before risking his title against Gaby Canizales on the undercard of Hagler-Mugabi in the outdoor stadium at Caesars Palace. In round seven, Sandoval, who had a hellish time making the weight, was knocked down three times and suffered a seizure as he collapsed from the third knockdown. Stretchered out of the ring, he was rushed to the hospital where doctors reduced the swelling in his brain and beat the odds to save his life. This would be Richie’s lone defeat. He finished his pro career with a record of 29-1 (17 KOs).

Bob Arum cushioned some of the pain by giving Richie a $25,000 bonus and offering him a lifetime job at Top Rank which Richie accepted. And let the record show that Arum was good to his word.

A more elaborate portrait of Richie Sandoval was published in these pages in 2017. You can check it out HERE. May he rest in peace.

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