A Boxer With A Detached Retina Weighs In On Margarito…FOLSTAD

Published

13 years ago

December 1, 2011

Cotto Margarito final PC 111130 003a Antonio Margarito will be fighting Saturday night thanks to the recent musings of the New York State Athletic Commission. The all-clear siren has sounded. All is suddenly right again in the closeted world of Top Rank.

The right eye is fine, and Margarito’s rematch with WBA super-welterweight champion Miguel Cotto is back on schedule at Madison Square Garden (HBO Pay-Per-View).

Too bad, though. I could have saved the NYSAC some time and heartache if they had just asked me about battered eyes. I would have told them it was safe for Margarito to fight again. His cataract surgery was last spring, or about the same time mine was. That’s plenty of time for the eye to heal, to see things clear again.

Why ask me? Because I know the wear and tear fighting puts on the eyes.

While it was Margarito’s right eye that was injured last year in his fight with Manny Pacquiao, it was my left eye that quit on me, surrendering to one too many punches thrown in one too many dark arenas.

At the time, it almost felt like a betrayal, a mutiny. One minute I was dreaming of titles, fame and fortune, the next minute I was eating breakfast while my fiancé told me about the career opportunities in selling life insurance. She was explaining all the benefits that come with regular paychecks and 40-hour weeks at a bank or in a real estate office, places where you won't bleed or bruise or cut too easily.

But I never really listened.

It was a right hand or a head butt or maybe a shoulder that did the damage, slipping in like a thief, doing the dirty work on my eye and then quietly slipping away unnoticed.

I still don't know how or exactly what round my retina became detached, but it struck a blow for an easier lifestyle.

For me, the world changed after that, moving from fight nights, big crowds, applause, newspaper clippings and long hours in the gym, to coffee and want ads in the morning. From sweatshirts, jeans and sneakers at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday to suit coats and ties and 9 a.m. appointments on the fifth floor of corporate buildings.

The fight – which turned out to be my last – was in the early winter of 1979 in Omaha, Neb., a cold, simple, out-of-the-way place to end a career.

It was supposed to be an easy eight-rounder, a gift for a week of heavy sparring with a guy named Dale Hernandez who was fighting the main event that same night against Lennox Blackmoore.

But by the time my fight was over, I had banged up my right hand, was cut over both eyes and had suffered the detached retina, though I didn't know it at the time.

Despite the carnage, I won the fight, but only in the hard, simple world of figures and won-loss records.

Fight long enough and you learn to ignore the small aches and pains that come with the job, the little inconveniences. They’re with you all the time. They just change places once in awhile. And that's all the battered eye seemed to be, a minor injury that needed nothing more than a few stitches and a little time to heal.

But two weeks later, the black curtain in my field of vision was still pulled down in the corner of my eye. It was like trying to look through a window with the shade half down.

I was scheduled to fight again in Winnipeg, Canada and when I went back to the gym to start training again, I told my trainer, Jim Morgan, that I was still having problems seeing out of the eye. He wouldn’t let me work out that night and the next day I saw an ophthalmologist. Two days later, I had eye surgery for a detached retina, my doctor telling me my fighting days were over, that there was a strong chance I could lose sight in the eye if I damaged it again in the ring. Since I was already very near-sighted, there weren’t a lot of options.

So after 60 amateur fights and 22 pro fights spread out over 12 years, a way of living was suddenly over. It was time to move on, to get a real job.

Still, you never forget what it was like to fight, how special it made you feel despite the crooked nose, the scars over the eyes and the rough edges that still slip out once in awhile.

I tried to explain it to my fiancé but she just shook her head, never understanding why I loved something as brutal as the prize ring.

I stayed away from boxing gyms for awhile after that. I would occasionally read about an upcoming fight, but I wouldn’t watch it. Occasionally, I would run into someone who knew me as a fighter and they would ask me why I wasn’t in the paper anymore and I’d just tell them it was time for me to retire. They would shake their heads, but I wouldn’t go into the details unless they asked me. And then I kept it short, told them I had a bad eye and couldn‘t risk loosing it.

“Maybe if I was fighting for a million dollars, it would be worth taking the risk,“ I’d say. “But I’m not going to jeopardize my eye for a $1,200 purse.”

I remember Sugar Ray Leonard suffered a detached retina two years after I did, and after deciding to retire, he later changed his mind and resumed his career. The medical profession had already made some strides in eye surgery. His purse also had a few more zeros on it than mine. Risk has a price.

Though I did my best to stay away from boxing after that, I eventually was drawn back to the ring and coached an amateur team in Arizona a few years later. And yeah, I sparred with some of the young fighters I trained, knowing the risk. But I believed that 16-ounce gloves, headgear and healing time would minimize the danger to my eye. Besides, I was never good at going cold turkey.

Despite the surgery, my left eye was never really the same after that night in Omaha, and almost 20 years later, in the spring of 1999, I had cataract surgery performed on the eye while living in Denver. The doctor told me my eyes were pretty beat up from my years of fighting and that was the problem.

Then, in March of this year, I was covering some spring training baseball games in Clearwater, FL when I noticed I couldn’t read the scoreboard from the press box. I decided I needed stronger contact lenses and glasses, so I went to another eye specialist in Tampa. Hesaid I needed cataract surgery in my other eye, my right eye.

He asked a lot of questions about my eyes and the trauma they’d been through and I told him about my boxing history. Two weeks later, in early April, I had cataract surgery on my other eye. Three days after that, I was no longer near-sighed. Today, all I need are reading glasses.

Sitting in my eye doctor’s office a few days after the surgery, I asked him half-jokingly if I would ever be able to put the gloves on again and spar.

Without missing a beat, he said I could start sparring again in a couple months after the implanted artificial lens had some time to heal.

“But it probably wouldn’t hurt you to wear headgear,“ he said, keeping a straight face.

Not a bad prognosis for a guy who wore glasses for 53 years, but can see better now at 60 than he could when he was 16.

Antonio Margarito? Saturday night, his eye will be the least of his worries.

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Rick Folstad

Skylar Lacy Blocked for Lamar Jackson before Making his Mark in Boxing

Published

2 days ago

January 19, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Skylar-Lacy-Blocked-for-Lamar-Jackson-Before-Making-his-Mark-in-Boxing

Skylar Lacy, a six-foot-seven heavyweight, returns to the ring on Sunday, Feb. 2, opposing Brandon Moore on a card in Flint, Michigan, airing worldwide on DAZN.

As this is being written, the bookmakers hadn’t yet posted a line on the bout, but one couldn’t be accused of false coloring by calling the 10-round contest a 50/50 fight. And if his frustrating history is any guide, Lacy will have another draw appended to his record or come out on the wrong side of a split decision.

This should not be construed as a tip to wager on Moore. “Close fights just don’t seem to go my way,” says the boxer who played alongside future multi-year NFL MVP Lamar Jackson at the University of Louisville.

A 2021 National Golden Gloves champion, Skylar Lacy came up short in his final amateur bout, losing a split decision to future U.S. Olympian Joshua Edwards. His last Team Combat League assignment resulted in another loss by split decision and he was held to a draw in both instances when stepping up in class as a pro. “In my mind, I’m still undefeated,” says Lacy (8-0-2, 6 KOs). “No one has ever kicked my ass.”

Lacy was the B-side in both of those draws, the first coming in a 6-rounder against Top Rank fighter Antonio Mireles on a Top Rank show in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, and the second in an 8-rounder against George Arias, a Lou DiBella fighter on a DiBella-promoted card in Philadelphia.

Lacy had the Mireles fight in hand when he faded in the homestretch. The altitude was a factor. Lake Tahoe, Nevada (officially Stateline) sits 6,225 feet above sea level. The fight with Arias took an opposite tack. Lacy came on strong after a slow start to stave off defeat.

Skylar will be the B-side once again in Michigan. The card’s promoter, former world title challenger Dmitriy Salita, inked Brandon Moore (16-1, 10 KOs) in January. “A capable American heavyweight with charisma, athleticism and skills is rare in today’s day and age. Brandon has got all these ingredients…”, said Salita in the press release announcing the signing. (Salita has an option on Skylar Lacy’s next pro fight in the event that Skylar should win, but the promoter has a larger investment in Moore who was previously signed to Top Rank, a multi-fight deal that evaporated after only one fight.)

Both Lacy and Moore excelled in other sports. The six-foot-six Moore was an outstanding basketball player in high school in Fort Lauderdale and at the NAIA level in college. Lacy was an all-state football lineman in Indiana before going on to the University of Louisville where he started as an offensive guard as a redshirt sophomore, blocking for freshman phenom Lamar Jackson. “Lamar was hard-working and humble,” says Lacy about the player who is now one of the world’s highest-paid professional athletes.

When Lacy committed to Louisville, the head coach was Charlie Strong who went on to become the head coach at the University of Texas. Lacy was never comfortable with Strong’s successor Bobby Petrino and transferred to San Jose State. Having earned his degree in only three years (a BA in communications) he was eligible immediately but never played a down because of injuries.

Returning to Indianapolis where he was raised by his truck dispatcher father, a single parent, Lacy gravitated to Pat McPherson’s IBG (Indy Boxing and Grappling) Gym on the city’s east side where he was the rare college graduate pounding the bags alongside at-risk kids from the city’s poorer neighborhoods.

Lacy built a 12-6 record across his two seasons in Team Combat League while representing the Las Vegas Hustle (2023) and the Boston Butchers (2024).

For the uninitiated, a Team Combat League (TCL) event typically consists of 24 fights, each consisting of one three-minute round. The concept finds no favor with traditionalists, but Lacy is a fan. It’s an incentive for professional boxers to keep in shape between bouts without disturbing their professional record and, notes Lacy, it’s useful in exposing a competitor to different styles.

“It paid the bills and kept me from just sitting around the house,” says Lacy whose 12-6 record was forged against 13 different opponents.

As a sparring partner, Lacy has shared the ring with some of the top heavyweights of his generation, e.g., Tyson Fury, Anthony Joshua and Dillian Whyte. He was one of Fury’s regular sparring partners during the Gypsy King’s trilogy with Deontay Wilder. He worked with Joshua at Derrick James’ gym in Dallas and at Ben Davison’s gym in England, helping Joshua prepare for his date in Saudi Arabia with Francis Ngannou and had previously sparred with Ngannou at the UFC Performance Center in Las Vegas. Skylar names traveling to new places as one of his hobbies and he got to scratch that itch when he joined Whyte’s camp in Portugal.

As to the hardest puncher he ever faced, he has no hesitation: “Ngannou,” he says. “I negotiated a nice price to spend a week in his camp and the first time he hit me I knew I should have asked for more.”

Lacy is confident that having shared the ring with some of the sport’s elite heavyweights will get him over the hump in what will be his first 10-rounder (Brandon Moore has never had to fight beyond eight rounds, having won his three 10-rounders inside the distance). Lacy vs. Moore is the co-feature to Claressa Shields’ homecoming fight with Danielle Perkins. Shields, basking in the favorable reviews accorded the big-screen biopic based on her first Olympic journey (“The Fire Inside”) will attempt to capture a title in yet another weight class at the expense of the 42-year-old Perkins, a former professional basketball player.

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Mizuki Hiruta Dominates in her U.S. Debut and Omar Trinidad Wins Too at Commerce

Published

4 days ago

January 18, 2025

David A. Avila

Mizuki-Hiruta-Dominates-in-her-U.S.-Debut-and-Trinidad-Wins-Too-at-Commerce

Japan’s Mizuki Hiruta smashed through Mexico’s Maribel Ramirez with ease in winning by technical decision and local hero Omar Trinidad continued his assault on the featherweight division on Friday.

Hiruta (7-0, 2 KOs), who prefers to be called “Mimi,” made her American debut with an impressive performance against Mexican veteran Maribel Ramirez (15-11-4) and retained the WBO super flyweight world title by unanimous decision at Commerce Casino in Commerce, Calif.

The pink-haired Japanese southpaw champion quickly proved to be quicker, stronger and even better than advertised. In the opening round Ramirez landed on the floor twice after throwing errant blows. On one instance, it could have been ruled a knockdown but it was not a convincing blow.

In the second round, Ramirez again attacked and again was met with a Hiruta check right hook and down went the Mexican. This time referee Ray Corona gave the eight-count and the fight resumed.

It was Hiruta’s third title defense but this time it was on American soil. She seemed nervous by the prospect of getting a favorable review from the more than 700 fans inside the casino tent.

For more than a year Hiruta has been training off and on with Manny Robles in the L.A. area. Now that she has a visa, she has spent considerable time this year learning the tricks of the trade. They proved explosively effective.

Though Mexico City’s Ramirez has considerable experience against world champions, she discovered that Hiruta was not easy to hit. Often, the Japanese champion would slip and counter with precision.

It was an impressive American debut, though the fight was stopped in the eighth round after a collision of heads. The scores were tallied and all three saw Hiruta the winner by scores of 80-71 twice and 79-72.

“I’m so happy. I could have done much more,” said Hiruta through interpreter Yuriko Miyata. “I wanted to do more things that Manny Robles taught me.”

Trinidad Wins Too

Omar Trinidad (18-0-1, 13 KOs) discovered that challenger Mike Plania (31-5, 18 KOs) has a very good chin and staying power. But over 10 rounds Trinidad proved to be too fast and too busy for the Filipino challenger.

Immediately it was evident that the East L.A. featherweight was too quick and too busy for Plania who preferred a counter-puncher attack that never worked.

“He was strong,” said Trinidad. “He took everything.”

After 10 redundant rounds all three judges scored for Trinidad 100-90 twice and 99-91. He retains the WBC Continental Americas title.

Other Bouts

Ali Akhmedov (23-1, 17 KOs) blasted out Malcolm Jones (17-5-1) in less than two rounds. A dozen punches by Akhmedov forced referee Thomas Taylor to stop the super middleweight fight.

Iyana “Roxy” Verduzco (3-0) bloodied Lindsey Ellis in the first round and continued the speedy assault in the next two rounds. Referee Ray Corona saw enough and stopped the fight in favor of Verduzco at 1:34 of the third round.

Gloria Munguilla (7-1) and Brook Sibrian (5-2) lit up the boxing ring with a nonstop clash for eight rounds in their light flyweight fight. Munguilla proved effective with a slip-and-counter attack. Sibrian adjusted and made the fight closer in the last four rounds but all three judges favored Munguilla.

More Winners

Joshua Anton, Tayden Beltran, Adan Palma, and Alexander Gueche all won their bouts.

Photos credit: Al Applerose

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 309: 360 Promotions Opens with Trinidad, Mizuki and More

Published

5 days ago

January 16, 2025

David A. Avila

Avila Perspective, Chap. 309: 360 Promotions Opens with Trinidad, Mizuki and More

Best wishes to the survivors of the Los Angeles wildfires that took place last week and are still ongoing in small locales.

Most of the heavy damage took place in the western part of L.A. near the ocean due to Santa Ana winds. Another very hot spot was in Altadena just north of the Rose Bowl. It was a horrific tragedy.

Hopefully the worst is over.

Pro boxing returns with 360 Boxing Promotions spotlighting East L.A.’s Omar Trinidad (17-0-1, 13 KOs) defending a regional featherweight title against Mike Plania (31-4, 18 KOs) on Friday, Jan. 17, at the Commerce Casino in Commerce, Calif.

“I’m the king of L.A. boxing and I’ll be ready to put on a show headlining again in the main event. This is my year, I’m ready to challenge and defeat any of the featherweight world champions,” said Trinidad.

UFC Fight Pass will stream the Hollywood Night fight card that includes a female world championship fight and other intriguing match-ups.

Tom Loeffler heads 360 Promotions and once again comes full force with a hot prospect in Trinidad. If you’re not familiar with Loeffler’s history of success, he introduced America to Oleksandr Usyk, Gennady “GGG” Golovkin and the brothers Wladimir and Vitaly Kltischko.

“We’ve got a wealth of international talent and local favorites to kick off our 2025 in grand style,” said Loeffler.

He knows talent.

Trinidad hails from the Boyle Heights area of East L.A. near the Los Angeles riverbed. Several fighters from the past came from that exact area including the first Golden Boy, Art Aragon.

Aragon was a huge gate attraction during the late 1940s until 1960. He was known as a lady’s man and dated several Hollywood starlets in his time. Though he never won a world title he did fight world champions Carmen Basilio, Jimmy Carter and Lauro Salas. He was more or less the king of the Olympic Auditorium and Los Angeles boxing during his career.

Other famous boxers from the Boyle Heights area were notorious gangster Mickey Cohen and former world champion Joey Olivo.

Can Trinidad reach world title status?

Facing Trinidad will be Filipino fighter Plania who’s knocked off a couple of prospects during his career including Joshua “Don’t Blink” Greer and Giovanni Gutierrez. The fighter from General Santos in the Philippines can crack and hold his own in the boxing ring.

It’s a very strong fight card and includes WBO world titlist Mizuki Hiruta of Japan who defends the super flyweight title against Mexican veteran Maribel Ramirez. It’s a tough matchup for Hiruta who makes her American debut. You can’t miss her with that pink hair and she has all the physical tools to make a splash in this country.

Mizukii Hiruta

Two other female bouts are also planned, including light flyweight banger L.A.’s Gloria Munguilla (6-1) against Coachella’s Brook Sibrian (5-1) in a match set for six rounds. Both are talented fighters. Another female fight includes super featherweights Iyana “Right Hook Roxy” Verduzco (2-0) versus Lindsey Ellis (2-1) in another six-rounder. Ellis can crack with all her wins coming via knockout. Verduzco is a multi-national titlist as an amateur.

Others scheduled to perform are Ali Akhmedov, Joshua Anton, Adan Palma and more.

Doors open at 4:30 p.m.

Boxing and the Media

The sport of professional boxing is currently in flux. It’s always in flux but no matter what people may say or write, boxing will survive.

Whether you like Jake Paul or not, he proved boxing has worldwide appeal with monstrous success in his last show. He has media companies looking at the numbers and imagining what they can do with the sport.

Sure, UFC is negotiating a massive billion dollar deal with media companies, as is WWE, both are very similar in that they provide combat entertainment. You don’t need to know the champions because they really don’t matter. Its about the attractions.

Boxing is different. The good champions last and build a following that endures even beyond their careers a la Mike Tyson.

MMA can’t provide that longevity, but it does provide entertainment.

Currently, there is talk of establishing a boxing league again. It’s been done over and over but we shall see if it sticks this time.

Pro boxing is the true warrior’s path and that means a solo adventure. It’s a one-on-one sport and that appeals to people everywhere. It’s the oldest sport that can be traced to prehistoric times. You don’t need classes in Brazilian Jiujitsu, judo, kick boxing or wrestling. Just show up in a boxing gym and they can put you to work.

It’s a poor person’s path that can lead to better things and most importantly discipline.

Photos credit: Lina Baker

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