Shadow Boxing at the Golden Gate, Part 1

Published

12 years ago

July 5, 2012

“The San Francisco fog has never been sufficiently glorified. The fogs… come in, not an enveloping blanket but a luminous drift, conferring a magic patina on the most commonplace structures, giving them an air of age and mystery.”

—Arnold Genthe, As I Remember, 1930.

San Francisco, California. On the morning of January 26^th 1975, a half-blind, fifty-seven-year-old hardware store clerk suffered cardiac arrest and collapsed at home. He died as quietly as he had lived. There were no public vigils, no testimonials about his contributions to society; few outside of family to mourn his loss. The man was also a fighter in the 1930s and 40s and this earned him a brief tribute in the sports section of the San Francisco Examiner. For a few aging readers, familiarity with the name may have fluttered in grainy memories before the page was turned. A service was held and the man was buried. Dust and silence descended.

The morning fog lifts like a curtain over the bay as the sun greets the Golden Gate Bridge. Five miles south is the old San Francisco Civic Auditorium, the site of some of the dead man’s biggest fights. A young boxing writer known for his cigar and ever-present fedora before Bert Sugar was born was there for all of them.

As it was, the writer never forgot him.

Archie Moore never forgot him either. Counted by many among the top ten greatest boxers who ever lived, the four-decade career of the Mongoose saw him roar through three divisions to become history’s king of knockouts with 131. Along the way he faced not one but two legendary heavyweight champions in Rocky Marciano and Muhammad Ali, though his hair was turning gray by the time he did.

This kind of longevity is rare. What allowed him to compete at such a high level for so long? The answer is found in choices made during his prime. Moore was a man who would walk out on Algebra and take Calculus simply to avoid being just another student. He’d face opposition everyone else sidestepped simply to avoid being just another pugilist. Moore earned his Ph.D in hard knocks from several hard men whose yellowed fight reports can still chill the spine. We call them “Murderers’ Row.”

Eddie Booker was among them.

“I’ve had some rough fights in my time,” said Moore, “but all things being equal, when I was in my prime, one of my toughest had to have been against Eddie Booker, a fighting machine… who shot out punches with deft precision.” He met Booker three times between 1941 and 1944 and knocked him down three times. Booker returned that favor twice plus one. The “dreaded Eddie Booker,” Moore remembered, “was one of the great fighters of my time. He had me fighting for dear life.”

The dreaded Eddie Booker of Murderers’ Row, a man the Mongoose could not beat—and probably the finest contender you’ve never heard of.

Sitting a few rows back from the action at key bouts during his career was Eddie Muller, boxing writer extraordinaire for the San Francisco Examiner. No film of Booker exists but this eyewitness also happened to be an expert analyst. Muller is our man on the scene.

On September 28^th 1942, Muller pointed his cigar at Lloyd Marshall and proclaimed him the first real middleweight test for Booker. “This fellow,” Muller warned Bay Area boxing fans, “can box or punch. He has more class than all of Booker’s middleweight victims.” That evening he watched the event at the Civic Auditorium and his cigar fell out of his mouth. A fighter forced by color and circumstance to moonlight as a redcap porter over at the depot on Third and Townsend, was launching himself into greatness.

“If there is a middleweight in the world who can beat Eddie Booker, we can’t name him,” Muller wrote. “After the masterful performance he turned in when he decisively outpointed Lloyd Marshall, he would be the odds on choice if he were to fight Tony Zale, division boss.”

Marshall, a 2010 International Boxing Hall of Fame Inductee, recovered from the loss and went on to beat Charley Burley and stop Ezzard Charles to become the number one-ranked contender within twelve months. He was considered by Muller to be about the best puncher in two divisions and the fact that he knocked Burley and Charles down a total of ten times confirmed that notion. It also confirmed that Booker had the kind of chin found in a quarry: Marshall landed three house-wrecking rights in the last round and Booker neither staggered nor blinked. Incredibly, Booker went straight from the auditorium to the sick bed after his victory —he had the flu.

And then fate stuck out its foot and tripped him.

In January 1943, he faced unorthodox speedster Jack Chase and was surprisingly outboxed, taking four of fifteen rounds. He was in the hospital for a damaged eye soon afterwards. A previous eye injury had been suffered, though his family believed that foul play was afoot this time. Booker’s step-daughter recalled talk of scissors being used to remove stuffing from the offending glove; It was assumed that this happened before the second fight with Archie Moore, but Booker faced Chase only a month after that and he would be the likelier suspect. Chase was a shady character, Archie was not.

Chase spent most of his younger years in an industrial school for boys, a state reformatory, and a penitentiary in Colorado for crimes ranging from assault to vagrancy. Thirty-nine bouts into his professional career he earned a two-year bid for burglary. Two years after his release he shot fellow Murderers’ Row member Aaron “Tiger” Wade in a bar on Fillmore Street. They took it to the ring six months later in what must have been ‘the grudge match di tutti grudge matches.’ The end of it raised eyebrows. Chase was hopelessly behind on the cards when Wade was suddenly blinded in the last round, floored, and after informing the referee he couldn’t see, the bout was stopped. Chase won on a technical knockout.

Chase’s disposition and prior history point toward his being responsible for Booker’s eye injury. The timing is right too. However, the real story may be less dramatic—Muller mentioned that Booker sustained the injury on a shipyard job that he had taken to support the war effort.

Whatever the truth is, the fighter languished for twenty-four days in a San Francisco hospital in February 1943. He was faced with a grave decision, though it wouldn’t be an uninformed one: Doctors warned that returning to the ring after eye surgery invited blindness. The boxing commission chimed in and said that he would have to submit to an optometrist’s exam after every bout.

Eddie Booker made his decision; he would tempt fate and storm the gates.

The San Francisco Bay Area would be the battleground.

__________________

Check back soon for Part 2 of “Shadow Boxing at the Golden Gate.”

Opening graphic (“San Francisco, Golden Gate in fire chamber”) courtesy of Ali Ertürk and artofhdr.com.

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

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Springs Toledo

The Challenge of Playing Muhammad Ali

Published

8 hours ago

December 18, 2024

Thomas Hauser

There have been countless dramatizations of Muhammad Ali’s life and more will follow in the years ahead. The most heavily marketed of these so far have been the 1977 movie titled The Greatest starring Ali himself and the 2001 biopic Ali starring Will Smith.

The Greatest was fictionalized. Its saving grace apart from Ali’s presence on screen was the song “The Greatest Love of All” which was written for the film and later popularized by Whitney Houston. Beyond that, the movie was mediocre. “Of all our sports heroes,” Frank Deford wrote, “Ali needs least to be sanitized. But The Greatest is just a big vapid valentine. It took a dive.”

The 2001 film was equally bland but without the saving grace of Ali on camera. “I hated that film,” Spike Lee said. “It wasn’t Ali.” Jerry Izenberg was in accord, complaining, “Will Smith playing Ali was an impersonation, not a performance.”

The latest entry in the Ali registry is a play running this week off-Broadway at the AMT Theater (354 West 45th Street) in Manhattan.

The One: The Life of Muhammad Ali was written by David Serero, who has produced and directed the show in addition to playing the role of Angelo Dundee in the three-man drama. Serero, age 43, was born in Paris, is of Moroccan-French-Jewish heritage, and has excelled professionally as an opera singer (baritone) and actor (stage and screen).

Let’s get the negatives out of the way first. The play is flawed. There are glaring factual inaccuracies in the script that add nothing to the dramatic arc and detract from its credibility.

On the plus side; Zack Bazile (pictured) is exceptionally good as Ali. And Serero (wearing his director’s hat) brings the most out of him.

Growing up, Bazile (now 28) excelled in multiple sports. In 2018, while attending Ohio State, he won the NCAA Long Jump Championship and was named Big Ten Field Athlete of the Year. He also dabbled in boxing, competed in two amateur fights in 2022, and won both by knockout. He began acting three years ago.

Serero received roughly one thousand resumes when he published notices for a casting call in search of an actor to play Ali. One-hundred-twenty respondents were invited to audition.

“I had people who looked like Ali and were accomplished actors,” Serero recalls. “But when they were in the room, I didn’t feel Ali in front of me. You have to remember; we’re dealing with someone who really existed and there’s video of him, so it’s not like asking someone to play George Washington.”

And Ali was Ali. That’s a hard act to follow.

Bazile is a near-perfect fit. At 6-feet-2-inches tall, 195 pounds, he conveys Ali’s physicality. His body is sculpted in the manner of the young Ali. He moves like an athlete because he is an athlete. His face resembles Ali’s and his expressions are very much on the mark in the way he transmits emotion to the audience. He uses his voice the way Ali did. He moves his eyes the way Ali did. He has THE LOOK.

Zack was born the year that Ali lit the Olympic flame in Atlanta, so he has no first-hand memory of the young Ali who set the world ablaze. “But as an actor,” he says, “I’m representing Ali. That’s a responsibility I take very seriously. Everyone has an essence about them. I had to find the right balance – not too over the top – and capture that.”

Sitting in the audience watching Bazile, I felt at times as though it was Ali onstage in front of me. Zack has the pre-exile Ali down perfectly. The magic dissipates a bit as the stage Ali grows older. Bazile still has to add the weight of aging to his craft. But I couldn’t help but think, “Muhammad would have loved watching Zack play him.”

****

Twenty-four hours after the premiere of The One, David Serero left the stage for a night to shine brightly in a real boxing ring., The occasion was the tenth fight card that Larry Goldberg has promoted at Sony Hall in New York, a run that began with Goldberg’s first pro show ever on October 13, 2022.

Most of the fights on the six-bout card played out as expected. But two were tougher for the favorites than anticipated. Jacob Riley Solis was held to a draw by Daniel Jefferson. And Andy Dominguez was knocked down hard by Angel Meza in round three before rallying to claim a one-point split-decision triumph.

Serero sang the national anthem between the second and third fights and stilled the crowd with a virtuoso performance. Fans at sports events are usually restless during the singing of the anthem. This time, the crowd was captivated. Serero turned a flat ritual into an inspirational moment. People were turning to each other and saying “Wow!”

****

The unexpected happened in Tijuana last Saturday night when 25-to-1 underdog Bruno Surace climbed off the canvas after a second-round knockdown to score a shocking, one-punch, sixth-round stoppage of Jaime Munguia. There has been a lot of commentary since then about what happened that night. The best explanation I’ve heard came from a fan named John who wrote, “The fight was not over in the second round although Munguia thought it was because, if he caught him once, he would naturally catch him again. Plus he looked at this little four KO guy [Surace had scored 4 knockouts in 27 fights] the way all the fans did, like he had no punch. That is what a fan can afford to do. But a fighter should know better. The ref reminds you, ‘Protect yourself at all times.’ Somebody forgot that.”

photo (c) David Serero

Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – MY MOTHER and me – is a personal memoir available at Amazon.com. https://www.amazon.com/My-Mother-Me-Thomas-Hauser/dp/1955836191/ref=sr_1_1?crid=5C0TEN4M9ZAH&keywords=thomas+hauser&qid=1707662513&sprefix=thomas+hauser%2Caps%2C80&sr=8-1

In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism. In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

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L.A.’s Rudy Hernandez is the 2024 TSS Trainer of the Year

Published

2 days ago

December 16, 2024

Arne K. Lang

L.A.’s Rudy Hernandez is the 2024 TSS Trainer of the Year

If asked to name a prominent boxing trainer who operates out of a gym in Los Angeles, the name Freddie Roach would jump immediately to mind. Best known for his work with Manny Pacquaio, Roach has been named the Trainer of the Year by the Boxing Writers Association of America a record seven times.

A mere seven miles from Roach’s iconic Wild Card Gym is the gym that Rudy Hernandez now calls home. Situated in the Little Tokyo neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles, the L.A. Boxing Gym – a relatively new addition to the SoCal boxing landscape — is as nondescript as its name. From the outside, one would not guess that two reigning world champions, Junto Nakatani and Anthony Olascuaga, were forged there.

As Freddie Roach will be forever linked with Manny Pacquiao, so will Rudy Hernandez be linked with Nakatani. The Japanese boxer was only 15 years old when his parents packed him off to the United States to be tutored by Hernandez. With Hernandez in his corner, the lanky southpaw won titles at 112 and 115 and currently holds the WBO bantamweight (118) belt. In his last start, he knocked out his Thai opponent, a 77-fight veteran who had never been stopped, advancing his record to 29-0 (22 KOs).

Nakatani’s name now appears on several pound-for-pound lists. A match with Japanese superstar Naoya Inoue is brewing. When that match comes to fruition, it will be the grandest domestic showdown in Japanese boxing history.

“Junto Nakatani is the greatest fighter I’ve ever trained. It’s easy to work with him because even when he came to me at age 15, his focus was only on boxing. It was to be a champion one day and nothing interfered with that dream,” Hernandez told sports journalist Manouk Akopyan writing for Boxing Scene.

Akin to Nakatani, Rudy Hernandez built Anthony Olascuaga from scratch. The LA native was rucked out of obscurity in April of 2023 when Jonathan Gonzalez contracted pneumonia and was forced to withdraw from his date in Tokyo with lineal light flyweight champion Kenshiro Teraji. Olascuaga, with only five pro fights under his belt, filled the breach on 10 days’ notice and although he lost (TKO by 9), he earned kudos for his gritty performance against the man recognized as the best fighter in his weight class.

Two fights later, back in Tokyo, Olascuaga copped the WBO world flyweight title with a third-round stoppage of Riku Kano. His first defense came in October, again in Japan, and Olascuaga retained his belt with a first-round stoppage of the aforementioned Gonzalez. (This bout was originally ruled a no-contest as it ended after Gonzalez suffered a cut from an accidental clash of heads. But the referee ruled that Gonzalez was fit to continue before the Puerto Rican said “no mas,” alleging his vision was impaired, and the WBO upheld a protest from the Olascuaga camp and changed the result to a TKO. Regardless, Rudy Hernandez’s fighter would have kept his title.)

Hernandez, 62, is the brother of the late Genaro “Chicanito” Hernandez. A two-time world title-holder at 130 pounds who fought the likes of Azumah Nelson, Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather Jr., Chicanito passed away in 2011, a cancer victim at age 45.

Genaro “Chicanito” Hernandez was one of the most popular fighters in the Hispanic communities of Southern California. Rudy Hernandez, a late bloomer of sorts – at least in terms of public recognition — has kept his brother’s flame alive with own achievements. He is a worthy honoree for the 2024 Trainer of the Year.

Note: This is the first in our series of annual awards. The others will arrive sporadically over the next two weeks.

Photo credit: Steve Kim

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A Shocker in Tijuana: Bruno Surace KOs Jaime Munguia !!

Published

4 days ago

December 15, 2024

Arne K. Lang

A-Shocker-in-Tijuana-Bruno-Sarace-KOs-Jaime-Munguia

It was a chilly night in Tijuana when Jaime Munguia entered the ring for his homecoming fight with Bruno Surace. The main event of a Zanfer/Top Rank co-promotion, Munguia vs. Surace was staged in the city’s 30,000-seat soccer stadium a stone’s throw from the U.S. border in the San Diego metroplex.

Surace, a Frenchman, brought a 25-0-2 record and a 22-fight winning streak, but a quick glance at his record showed that he had scant chance of holding his own with the house fighter. Only four of Surace’s 25 wins had come by stoppage and only eight of his wins had come against opponents with winning records. Munguia was making the first start in the city of his birth since February 2022. Surace had never fought outside Europe.

But hold the phone!

After losing every round heading into the sixth, Surace scored the Upset of the Year, ending the contest with a one-punch knockout.

It looked like a short and easy night for Munguia when he knocked Surace down with a left hook in the second stanza. From that point on, the Frenchman fought off his back foot, often with back to the ropes, throwing punches only in spurts. Munguia worked the body well and was seemingly on the way to wearing him down when he was struck by lightning in the form of an overhand right.

Down went Munguia, landing on his back. He struggled to get to his feet, but the referee waived it off a nano-second before reaching “10.” The official time was 2:36 of round six.

Munguia, who was 44-1 heading in with 35 KOs, was as high as a 35/1 favorite. In his only defeat, he had gone the distance with Canelo Alvarez. This was the biggest upset by a French fighter since Rene Jacquot outpointed Donald Curry in 1989 and Jacquot had the advantage of fighting in his homeland.

Co-Main

Mexico City’s Alan Picasso, ranked #1 by the WBC at 122 pounds, scored a third-round stoppage of last-minute sub Yehison Cuello in a scheduled 10-rounder contested at featherweight. Picaso (31-0-1, 17 KOs) is a solid technician. He ended the bout with a left to the rib cage, a punch that weaved around Cuello’s elbow and didn’t appear to be especially hard. The referee stopped his count at “nine” and waived the fight off.

A 29-year-old Colombian who reportedly had been training in Tijuana, the overmatched Cuello slumped to 13-3-1.

Other Bouts of Note

In a ho-hum affair, junior middleweight Jorge Garcia advanced to 32-4 (26) with a 10-round unanimous decision over Uzbekistan’s Kudratillo Abudukakhorov (20-4). The judges had it 97-92 and 99-90 twice. There were no knockdowns, but Garcia had a point deducted in round eight for low blows.

Garcia displayed none of the power that he showed in his most recent fight three months ago in Arizona and when he knocked out his German opponent in 46 seconds. Abudukakhorov, who has competed mostly as a welterweight, came in at 158 1/4 pounds and didn’t look in the best of shape. The Uzbek was purportedly 170-10 as an amateur (4-5 per boxrec).

Super bantamweight Sebastian Hernandez improved to 18-0 (17 KOs) with a seventh-round stoppage of Argentine import Sergio Martin (14-5). The end came at the 2:39 mark of round seven when Martin’s corner threw in the towel. Earlier in the round, Martin lost his mouthpiece and had a point deducted for holding.

Hernandez wasn’t all that impressive considering the high expectations born of his high knockout ratio, but appeared to have injured his right hand during the sixth round.

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

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