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The Beast of Stillman's Gym, Part 6…TOLEDO

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beast-Middleweight Bert Lytell meets light heavyweight Archie Moore, 1950

PART 6: “THE WORLD’S MOST FEARED MIDDLEWEIGHT”

Rocky Graziano’s manager stood in a gym in a Massachusetts mill town watching Johnny Eagle train and was impressed enough to pick him to upset Bert Lytell. It was wishful thinking. Bert took a unanimous decision, snapping Eagle through the ropes along the way. There might have been a message in that. Bert had been spouting off to the press about Graziano, accusing him of “repeatedly refusing to sign for a match.” He believed he would eventually “force” the Italian bomber to reconsider. That too would prove to be wishful thinking.

In April 1947 Bert faced Sam Baroudi in New York. French superstar Marcel Cerdan was there scouting for his third match on American soil. Baroudi was a dangerous boxer-puncher coming up like a “like a house a fire” and Bert took him apart –-he took him apart while Cerdan sat ringside and thought up excuses not to fight him.

Bert’s long-awaited rematch with Jake LaMotta was set for May at Madison Square Garden with the winner to meet Tony Zale for the middleweight championship of the world. It fell through and was rescheduled for September. That date was cancelled after a physician from the New York State Athletic Commission examined LaMotta’s hands, which had been badly bruised in a bout only a few days before. Finally, a date in January 1948 was reserved, again at Madison Square Garden. It too was cancelled after LaMotta was suspended during an investigation into his suspicious loss to Billy Fox.

Cerdan, who didn’t terrorize the American field so much as tiptoe through it, got the title shot in September and defeated Zale for the middleweight crown.

His first defense would be against none other than the Bronx Bull.

LaMotta had finally caved in to Mob pressure. A man with a toothpick in his mouth approached him one day in the gym and made an offer. “Throw the fight with Fox,” he said, “and you’ll get a title shot.” LaMotta threw him out, but then got to thinking. He took a walk a few nights later, a long one, and the ruthless truth met him along the way:

  You want to be “the champ” more than anything, but you’ve made all the wrong enemies. You’re too stubborn to do business with Frankie Carbo and too stupid to see what you’re up against. It’s the Mob that is the establishment here, my friend, and it’s the Mob that holds all the strings. You’ve been swapping blows with colored bombers for years and just like them you’re making chump change and going nowhere.

You and your “pride.” Your pride and a dime can get you into the subway, but it will never get you what you want most.

And that was that. LaMotta would stop Cerdan in ten rounds and got what he wanted most. “It felt like God had given me the world,” he said afterwards.

Those four kings –-LaMotta, Cerdan, Zale, and Graziano-– reigned during Bert’s rampage. Not one of them would have been any more than even money to beat him. It was a tragic irony, really. There he was fighting out of perhaps the greatest gym in boxing history with well-connected managers and a crowd-pleasing style and it didn’t matter. It just didn’t matter.

He was like bitter coffee that no one wanted to drink; too black, too strong, and as it turned out, too honest.

HAVE GUNS, WILL TRAVEL

The late Allen Rosenfeld remembered hanging around Stillman’s when a “wave of excitement” erupted around him. “Bert Lytell was in the gym,” he recalled. Rosenfeld ran upstairs and saw a “pleasant and friendly looking” boxer skipping rope and working the speed bag. He heard the regulars muttering “no one will fight him.”

Murderers’ Row seethed with top contenders that no one would fight, but Bert was off by himself even among them. He went after anyone, even other hard cases. Not many dared hunt LaMotta in the mid 1940s. Bert did. No one in their right mind went after a destroyer like Ezzard Charles. Bert did; he even offered to donate his purse to charity.

The buzz was that he was “the world’s most feared middleweight” and he’d migrate overseas to prove it. When he came back from a month-long campaign in the Caribbean, The Ring ranked him number one. He’d also migrate across weight divisions. In December 1948, he was scheduled to confront the second-ranked light heavyweight in the world, and his manager was barking even before he won. He publically offered Cerdan both purses if he agreed to meet Bert for the title: “All we want is training expenses. If we win tonight’s fight and Cerdan still ignores our challenge then we’ll go after the light heavyweight crown.”

Two kings –-Freddie Mills and Joey Maxim-– reigned during Bert’s light heavyweight rampage; neither of them would have been any more favored to beat him than their middleweight counterparts.

Despite his status as an apex contender in two divisions, he had to stay in condition like a ham-and-egger in hopes of earning enough purses to get by. He’d fight anyone, anytime, and there isn’t even a rumor that says otherwise. Managers desperate to find a last-minute substitute knew where to find him. One day a call came into Stillman’s from Ohio to offer Bert a purse of $734.86 (minus expenses) to fight a light heavyweight named Bob Amos. Bert arrived in Dayton on Sunday, trained Tuesday and Wednesday, and was ready by Thursday night. Amos’s trainer was Eddie Futch, who peered sorrowfully through the ropes while his fighter got belted around the ring for ten rounds. “Lytell crowded Amos from the outset, and seldom let up,” said the Dayton Daily News, “Bert’s style –-and it’s a varied one, because he really knows his way around that ring–- had Amos worried from the start and frequently befuddled thereafter.” Futch never wanted Lytell for his boy in the first place.

There were sightings as far off as California. A crowd gathered around the ring in Harry Fine’s gym and watched him stand up to a mountain and chop it down with both hands. The mountain was 6’4, 220 lb Leroy Evans. Bert was 5’8.

A few days later he was swarming all over the heavy-punching Oakland Billy Smith.

Smith was meat for Murderers’ Row, but that didn’t mean he went down easy. When Bert faced Smith again in Cincinnati, “Both fighters wrestled to the floor several times,” the AP reported, and “at one point, were trading punches while sitting on the canvas.” The AP failed to report that at another point Smith spit in Bert’s face. He was suspended in Cincinnati after that one, though a cursory glance at some of his other misadventures suggests that he should have been committed.

Before Bert, there was Newsboy Millich. Millich got to Smith by whispering indecent things into his ear and fouling him in close, so Smith started kicking him. After Bert, there was Jersey Joe Walcott. Walcott hired Smith as a sparring partner in the early 50s. Smith would show up to work wearing a yellow turtleneck and a harness with straps dangling around his knees. No one could say why, least of all Billy. In one session, Smith hit Walcott so hard the heavyweight champ did an “involuntary shuffle” and Walcott responded with a right hand that froze Smith in suspended animation. In another session, Smith fled the ring.

It wasn’t the first time he fled the ring. “Disappearing” Billy Smith, as he became known, gave reporters plenty of material. In the eighth round of his fourth fight against Archie Moore, Smith turned away from Moore and was heard yelling “shut up” toward his corner when Moore nailed him. Smith went down, got up at the count of five, parted the ropes, and took off toward the dressing room. The next day he appeared before the boxing commission to explain what happened. “I was hurt, but only mentally” he said to several raised eyebrows. “All through the fight [my corner] kept yelling ‘one-two’, ‘one-two’ and what happened? Archie gave me a one-two to the head,” Smith said, “Bert Lytell punished me two months ago in Texas, and I didn’t aim to go through that again. It took me more than a month to recover from that beating.” 

THE ELIMINATION BOUT

Where Smith was meat for Murderers’ Row, Archie Moore was a master of it. He was also one of Bert’s early mentors at Stillman’s Gym.

Bert fought Moore on even terms for seven rounds. He shifted behind a right jab and fought a style that was, according to the Baltimore Sun, “as elusive as plans for a Stadium roof.” Moore was outworked in close during rounds four and five but landed flush rights when he could find the bobbing and weaving target. After the seventh round, Moore’s thirteen-pound weight advantage came into play and he rumbled ahead to take a decision. Bert had a victory of sorts –he never staggered and never went down against one of the most destructive punchers of the last century.

The rematch was on January 31st 1950. It was the most important bout of Bert’s career. According to the matchmaker for Madison Square Garden, Moore-Lytell II was really an “elimination bout” that would decide the next challenger for light heavyweight champion Joey Maxim.

As a new resident of Toledo, Ohio, Moore didn’t have to travel far to the Sports Arena. He entered the ring to the cheers of a friendly crowd and sported a nine-pound weight advantage, a three-inch height advantage, and considerably more experience. Despite it all, Bert proved that he was at least the equal of Moore. The Toledo Blade reported only “a hair margin dividing any of the rounds.” Both fighters, “past masters at the art of defense had a hard time breaking through” as punches were almost invariably “caught on the gloves, arms, or shoulders.” The decision was announced for Moore and 7300 of his new neighbors erupted not in cheers but in protest. Bert stood in defiance across the ring; nose bloody, pride intact.

It did no good for either man. Bert lost –-whether or not he was robbed didn’t matter. Moore would have only one more fight in 1950 because no one wanted to risk their record. And the title shot he was promised? It was nothing more than the promise of a politician. The fine print of the agreement said that Maxim and his manager had to agree to terms –-and it took time coming to terms with losing the title.

It took three years. At Christmastime 1952, Archie Moore finally fought for the championship of the world. He was 36 years old. Fate bought him a bus ticket out of Murderers’ Row and escorted him into the company of kings.

By then, the career of Bert Lytell had tanked.

____________________________

Did Bert Lytell retire? Nope. A mysterious offer is made that he can’t refuse, and he refuses anyway –with severe consequences. Read all about it in PART 7 OF “THE BEAST OF STILLMAN’S GYM.”

The graphic is from the Toledo Blade, 1/30/50.

Irving Cohen’s bet in Berkshire Evening Eagle 10/17,18/46; 4/21/47. Dick Friendlich’s “Boxing Briefs” in San Francisco Chronicle undated. New York Herald-Tribune 4/7,8/47; The Stars and Stripes, 12/16/48. LaMotta cancellations, AP 9/9/47 and New York Times 11/22/47. Cerdan Kansas City Times 12/14/48. LaMotta makes a deal in Raging Bull pp. 159-164, 169. Passenger manifest, Pan American Airways, Inc. 11/2/1948. Allen S. Rosenfeld’s memories at Stillman’s in Charley Burley: The Life and Hard Times of an Uncrowned Champion, p. 500. Lytell-Amos in Dayton Daily News 8/19/49. LaMotta-Fox in The Berkshire Evening Eagle, 11/22/1947. Chasing Ezzard Charles in Times-Picayune 4/5/46. Sparring a heavyweight in San Francisco Examiner 1/19/48; Bert willing to fight Cerdan for free and Mills, AP, 12/15/48. Oakland Billy Smith in Berkeley Daily Gazette, 4/10/45, Red Smith’s “Views of Sports,” 9/15/52, AP 1/4, 5/51 and UP 1/4/51. Ezzard Charles at fight in AP 2/27/48; Moore-Lytell I, The Sun 7/14,15,16/47; Moore-Lytell II, Toledo Blade 1/29,31/50, 2/1/50, The Stars and Stripes, 2/5/1950.

Springs Toledo can be contacted at scalinatella@hotmail.com“>scalinatella@hotmail.com.

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With Valentine’s Day on the Horizon, let’s Exhume ex-Boxer ‘Machine Gun’ McGurn

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Feb. 14, which this year falls on a Friday, is Valentine’s Day, more formally St. Valentine’s Day. It’s a day identified with romance, but for students of organized crime, it summons up an image of a different sort. On Valentine’s Day in 1929, at a warehouse in the Lincoln Park district of Chicago, seven men were lined up against a wall and murdered in cold blood by four intruders with machine guns and shotguns. The infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre was the most sensational news story during the Prohibition Era when many of America’s cities, most notably Chicago, were roiled by deadly turf wars between rival bootlegging factions.

It shouldn’t surprise us that a former boxer was one of the alleged perpetrators. During the Prohibition years, bootleggers were well-represented among the ranks of boxing promoters and managers. Philadelphia’s Max “Boo Boo” Hoff reportedly had the largest boxing stable in the country. In New York, Owney Madden was purportedly the brains behind the consortium that controlled future heavyweight champion Primo Carnera.

That brings us to Jack McGurn, but first a little context. Prohibition was the law of the land from 1920, when the Volstead Act took effect, until 1933 when the ill-conceived law was repealed. Prohibition did not fetter America’s thirst for alcoholic beverages but arguably encouraged it. Confirmed beer drinkers didn’t stop drinking beer because it was illegal. Restaurateurs at high-end establishments didn’t stop selling cognac and brandy; they just did it more discreetly. Speakeasies became fashionable.

Big money awaited entrepreneurs willing to risk arrest by flouting the law, either by opening distilleries and breweries or importing alcohol with Canada the leading supplier.

In Chicago and environs, circa 1929, two of the kingpins of the bootlegging trade were “Scarface” Al Capone and George “Bugs” Moran. They were bitter rivals. The warehouse at which the seven men were assassinated housed some of Moran’s delivery trucks. The victims were members of his gang.

Al Capone wasn’t directly involved. On Feb. 14, he was in Florida where, among other things, he was finalizing arrangements to host a bevy of A-list sportswriters at his lavish Miami Beach estate; the scribes were coming to town to cover the heavyweight title eliminator between Jack Sharkey and Young Stribling. But the hired guns, who stormed into Moran’s warehouse at 10:30 on a snowy Valentine’s Day morning, were presumed to be working for Capone and the one henchman whose name stood out among the usual suspects was Jack McGurn. He had purportedly saved Capone’s life on two occasions by intercepting would-be assassins out to kill his boss and shooting them dead. Of all his underlings, Capone was said to be especially fond of McGurn.

Maching Gun McGurn

Machine Gun Jack McGurn

It had long been the custom of Jewish and Italian boxers to adopt Irish-sounding ring names. McGurn was born Vincenzo Gibaldi in 1902 in the Sicilian seaside city of Licata and lived in Brooklyn before moving with his widowed mother to Chicago. He had his first documented prizefight in 1921. The bout was held on a naval training ship, the U.S.S. Commodore. Prizefighting was then illegal in the Windy City, a residue of the malodorous 1900 fight between Terry McGovern and Joe Gans, but the ship was docked outside the Chicago city limits.

McGurn would have five more documented fights, the last against Bud Christiano on a strong card in Aurora, Illinois. Their six-round bout was the semi-windup. The main go was a 10-round contest between bantamweights Bud Taylor, the Terre Haute Terror, and Memphis Pal Moore, both of whom are enshrined in the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

By law, these were no-decision fights with wagers resting on the opinion of one or more ringside reporters. McGurn really had no business in the same ring with Christiano, an 84-fight veteran who had won two of three from future world lightweight title-holder Jimmy Goodrich. He took the worst of it, but was still standing at the final bell. And that was that. After only six pro fights, he hung up his gloves to pursue other endeavors and, in time, when his name appeared in the newspapers, it invariably appeared as Machine Gun Jack McGurn, the reference to the newfangled Thompson Machine Gun, colloquially the Tommy Gun, a tool with which McGurn was said to be very proficient.

The police found McGurn holed up in a Chicago hotel where he was staying with his girlfriend, Louise Rolfe, a 22-year-old “professional model and cabaret entertainer” with a 5-year-old daughter from a previous relationship being raised by her mother.

Louise testified that on the day of the massacre, they were in bed until noon. She said that she and McGurn had seldom left the room during their 13-day stay, having their food brought up from the hotel’s kitchen.

Louise held tight to her story and the police never did have sufficient evidence to charge the ex-boxer in connection with the crime. However, whenever the authorities were frustrated in sending a perp to prison, they had other weapons at their disposal to get their pound of flesh.

In the case of Scarface Al Capone, it was the 1913 law that authorized a federal income tax. The feds had enough circumstantial evidence to show that Al hadn’t been paying his fair share of taxes and succeeded in removing him from society. (After serving almost eight years in federal prisons, mostly Alcatraz, Capone returned to civilian life a sick man and passed away in Florida at age 48.)

In the case of Machine Gun Jack McGurn and his paramour, later his wife, the wedge was the Mann Act of 1910.

The Mann Act, most famously used to waylay heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, was aimed at brothel-keepers and immigrant flesh peddlers but was worded in such a way that it could be applied when there was no commerce involved. It prohibited the interstate transportation of “any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.” (The law remains on the books but has been watered-down to decriminalize sexual activity between consenting adults.)

The feds spent thousands of hours digging up evidence to show that the couple had violated the Mann Act. They eventually got hotel receipts showing that they had registered as Mr. and Mrs. under assumed names at hotels in Florida and Mississippi during a motor trip down south. Jack was sentenced to two years in Leavenworth and Louise to four months in the county jail, but their convictions were later overturned by the Illinois Supreme Court.

What comes around, goes around, goes the saying, and it figured that Machine Gun Jack McGurn would die a violent death. The ex-boxer met his maker at 1 a.m. on Feb. 15, 1936, at a second-floor bowling alley in Chicago where he was fatally shot by two gunmen who opened fire as his back was turned. There were at least 20 people present said the story in the Chicago Tribune, but “the wall of silence, traditional among the gangsters and the people who know them, was erected high and tight.”

Was McGurn’s murder retaliation for the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre? The answer appears to be a resounding “yes.” Had the deed happened before the stroke of midnight, it would have happened on a St. Valentine’s Day, the seventh anniversary of the infamous event.

The police found a crumpled comic Valentine’s card next to McGurn’s body. On the front of the card were the figures of a man and a woman in their underwear. The verse inside read:

You’ve lost your job, You’ve lost your dough;

Your jewels and cars and handsome houses;

But things could still be worse you know

At least you haven’t lost your trousers.

Was this card intentionally left there by the assassins? We don’t know, but the view from here (pardon the wisecrack) is that if one were to receive a card on Valentine’s Day bearing this poem, perhaps it would be best not to leave the house.

Postscript #1: Jack McGurn’s wife, the former Louise Rolfe, routinely referenced in the press as his blonde alibi, continued to have her name pop up in the news after he died. In February of 1940, police found a gun used in a burglary in a drawer in her apartment. In 1943, she was arrested on a charge of disorderly conduct after police found her in the company of a 25-year-old Army deserter.

Postscript #2:

Al Capone refused to pose for photographs, but made an exception for his friend Jack Sharkey, the future heavyweight champion. Sharkey is pictured on the right next to Capone in this 1929 photo.

****

The Mob Museum, officially the National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement, opened 13 years ago on Feb. 14, 2012 in an old three-story building in downtown Las Vegas that was originally a federal courthouse. So, each Valentine’s Day is a special occasion at the Mob Museum, an anniversary celebrated with special events, free admission for Nevada residents, and steep discounts for tourists. (On other days of the year, a single admission during peak hours is $34.95, but there are always discounts available on-line.)

A permanent display is a reconstructed portion of the wall where the seven victims were murdered.  The garage where the killings happened was demolished in 1967, but before it was torn down a collector rescued many of the bricks, some with blood-stained bullet holes, which the Mob Museum acquired. Other artifacts on display this Friday will be the two Tommy Guns used in the assault, a one-day loan from the Berrian County Sheriff’s Department in Michigan which recovered the weapons from the home of a bank robber.

For the record, there is also a mob museum, called the Gangster Museum of America, in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

A recognized authority on the history of prizefighting and the history of American sports gambling, TSS editor-in-chief Arne K. Lang is the author of five books including “Prizefighting: An American History,” released by McFarland in 2008 and re-released in a paperback edition in 2020.

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More ‘Dances’ in Store for Derek Chisora after out-working Otto Wallin in Manchester

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Tonight’s fight at Co-op Live Arena in Manchester between Derek Chisora and Otto Wallin bore the tagline “Last Dance.” The reference was to Chisora who at age 41 was on the cusp of his last hurrah. However, when the IBF went and certified the match as an eliminator, that changed the equation and, truth be told, Chisora would have likely soldiered on regardless of the outcome.

The UK boxing fans have embraced Chisora, an honest workman, never an elite fighter, but always a tough out. They certainly hope to see him in action again and they will get their wish. Tonight, he made more fans with a hard-earned, unanimous decision over 34-year-old Swedish southpaw Otto Wallin who went to post a small favorite.

Chisora came out fast, pressuring the Swede while keeping his hands busy. He was comfortably ahead after five rounds, but was seemingly ripe for a comedown after cuts developed above and below his right eye. Fortunately for him, he had the prominent Canadian cutman Russ Amber in his corner.

Chisora scored two knockdowns before the fight was finished. The first came in round nine when Chisora caught Wallin with a punch that landed high on his temple. In a delayed reaction, Wallin went flying backward, landing on his butt. Wallin recovered nicely and had his best round in the next frame.

Wallin appeared to be winning the final round when Chisora put the explanation point on his performance just as the final bell was about to ring, catching the Swede off-balance with a cuffing right hand that sent him to the floor once again. If not for that knockdown, there would have been some controversy when the scores were read. The tallies were 117-109, 116-110, and 114-112, the latter of which was too generous to Wallin (27-3).

“I love the sport and I love the fans,” said Derek Chisora (36-13, 23 KOs), addressing the audience in his post-fight interview. His next bout will likely come against the winner of the match between Daniel Dubois and Joseph Parker happening later this month in Saudi Arabia.

Semi-wind-up

Stoke-on-Kent middleweight Nathan Heaney disappointed his large contingent of rooters when he was upset by French invader Sofiane Khati. The 35-year-old Heaney, who was 18-1-1 heading in, started well and was slightly ahead after six frames when things turned sour.

Both landed hard punches simultaneously in round seven, but the Frenchman’s punch was more damaging, knocking out Heaney’s mouthpiece and putting him on the canvas. When he arose, Khati, a 6/1 underdog, charged after him and forced the referee to intrude, saving Heaney from more punishment. The official time was 1:08 of round seven. It was the sixth win in the last seven tries for Khati (18-5, 7 KOs) who, akin to Chisora, is enjoying a late-career resurgence.

Other Bouts of Note

Lancashire junior welterweight Jack Rafferty was an 18/1 favorite over Morecambe ditch digger Reece MacMillan and won as expected. MacMillan’s corner tossed in the towel at the 1:08 mark of round seven. Rafferty’s record now stands at 25-0 (16 KOs), giving him the longest current unbeaten run of any British boxer. It was the second loss in 19 starts for MacMillan.

In a lackluster performance, Zach Parker, now competing as a light heavyweight, improved his record to 26-1 (19) with a 10-round decision over France’s Mickael Diallo (21-2-2) who took the bout on five days’ notice after Parker’s original opponent Willy Hutchinson suffered a bad shoulder injury in sparring and had to withdraw. The scores were 98-92, 98-93, and 97-94.

Parker’s lone defeat came in a domestic showdown with John Ryder, a match in which he could not continue after four rounds because of a broken hand. The prize for Ryder was a date with Canelo Alvarez. Mickael Diallo has another fight booked in four weeks in Long Beach, California.

Also

Featherweight Zak Miller scored the biggest win of his career, capturing a pair of regional trinkets with a 12-round majority decision over Masood Abdulah. The judges had it 115-113, 115-114, and 114-114.

Heading in, Miller was 15-1 but had defeated only one opponent with a winning record. It was the first pro loss for Abdulah (11-1), an Afghanistan-born Londoner.

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 313: The Misadventures of Canelo and Jake Paul (and More)

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 313: The Misadventures of Canelo and Jake Paul (and More)

Boxing news has taken a weird arc.

For the past 20 years or so, social media has replaced newspapers, radio and television as a source for boxing news.

And one thing is certain:

You cannot truly rely on many social media accounts to be accurate. Unless they are connected to actual reputable journalists. There are not that many.

Claims of Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Jake Paul reaching an agreement to fight each other this year were rampant on social media sites. No contracts had been signed between the two parties, but several social media accounts claimed the fight was happening. One claimed: “it was official.”

It is not happening as of Friday Feb. 7. 10 a.m. Pacific Time.

A statement by Most Valuable Promotions was sent Friday Feb. 7, to various boxing publications that emphasized the Canelo-Paul fight is not official.

“MVP was deep in negotiations for a blockbuster fight between Jake Paul and Canelo Alvarez on Cinco de Mayo weekend in Las Vegas…This situation is a reminder not to believe everything you read.”

The past few days numerous social media accounts were posting erroneously that Paul and Canelo Alvarez were fighting on a certain date and place. It was jumped on by other social media accounts like Piranhas and gobbled up and spit out as actual verified news.

Fake news is happening more and more. I hate that term but it’s becoming more common.

Many accounts on social media sites are not trained journalists. They don’t understand that being the first to spit out news is not as important as being accurate.

Also, there is no such thing as using the term “according to sources” without naming the source. Who made the claim?

Third, verification of a fight comes from the promoters. They are the most reliable methods of verifying a pending fight. It’s their job. Don’t rely on a fighter, a trainer or somebody’s friend. Call the promoter involved and they will verify.

Otherwise, it’s just rumor and exaggeration.

There are social media accounts with trained journalists. Find out which social media accounts are connected to actual news media sources and established by trained journalists. A real journalist verifies a story before it is published.

R.I.P. Michael Katz

Recently, a highly respected journalist, Michael Katz, passed away. He wrote for various newspapers including the New York Times and for various boxing web sites such as Maxboxing.com and a few others.

Katz covered prize fights beginning in 1968 with the heavyweight fight between Floyd Patterson and Jimmy Ellis. Read the full story in www.TheSweetscience.com by Arne Lang.

I first came across Katz probably in 1994 when I began covering boxing events as a writer for the L.A .Times. During media press conferences Katz was one of the more prominent writers and very outspoken.

The New York-bred Katz could tell you stories about certain eras in boxing. I happened to overhear one or two while sitting around a dinner buffet in the media rooms in Las Vegas. He always had interesting things to say.

Boxing writers come in waves during each era. Today this new era of boxing writers has dwindled to almost nothing. Writing has been overtaken by boxing videographers. The problem is during an actual fight, videographers cannot record the fight itself. The media companies sponsoring the fight cards don’t allow it. So, after a fight is completed, very few descriptions of a fight exist. Only interviews.

Written journalism is shrinking due to the lack of newspapers, magazines and periodicals. The only sure way to know what happened is by seeing the fight on tape. You won’t see many stories on a bulletin board at a boxing gym because there are fewer boxing writers today. The written history of a championship fight has shrunk to almost nothing.

Katz was one of the superb writers from the 1960s to the 2000s. It’s a shrinking base that gets smaller every day. It’s a dying breed but there are still some remaining.

Fights in SoCal

All Star Boxing returns with two female fights on the card on Saturday Feb. 8, at Commerce Casino in Commerce, Calif.

Stephanie Simon (1-0) and Archana Sharma (3-2) are scheduled to headline the boxing card in a super lightweight main event. Others on the boxing event include Ricardo De La Torre, Bryan Albarran and Jose Mancilla to name a few.

Doors open at 6 p.m. No one under 14 will be admitted. For more information call (323) 816-6200.

Fights to Watch

Sat. DAZN 10:30 a.m. Derek Chisora (35-13) vs Otto Wallin (27-2).

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