Chad Dawson’s KO By

Published

13 years ago

October 8, 2012

Boxing would be well served to have a policy in place to deal with damage suffered in the gym, in sparring. (Hogan)

The Greek dramatist Aeschylus (525-456 BC) wrote, “The first casualty of war is truth.”

Boxing is war. And while the essence of ring combat is truth, a lot of what goes on behind the scenes is neither honorable nor honest. With that in mind, there’s an issue relating to the September 8th fight in Oakland between Andre Ward and Chad Dawson that should be explored.

Ward entered the fight with an unblemished 25-and-0 record. By virtue of his “super six” tournament conquests, he was widely recognized as super-middleweight champion of the world. Dawson sported a 30-and-1 ledger and was the #1 light-heavyweight in boxing.

Prior to the bout, rumors circulated that Dawson had been knocked down and badly hurt by Edison Miranda in a sparring session. Team Dawson denied the rumors. Walter Kane (Chad’s attorney) says that, to his knowledge, no one from the California State Athletic Commission asked anyone in the Dawson camp about them. Dawson underwent the usual pro forma pre-fight medical examination, but that’s all.

In the fight itself, Chad looked tentative and weak. He’d been knocked down twice before in his career; by Eric Harding in 2006 and Tomasz Adamek a year later. Each time, he’d gotten up and won a unanimous decision by a comfortable margin.

Ward knocked Dawson down in the third, fourth, and tenth rounds en route to a tenth-round stoppage. Andre is a superb fighter, but he’s not a knockout puncher. In Ward’s previous eight outings, the only opponent he’d KO’d was Shelby Pudwell (who was knocked out by John Duddy in one round). In the entire “Super Six” tournament, Andre didn’t knock an opponent down.

After Ward-Dawson, the rumors multiplied. Miguel Diaz told BoxingScene.com that, in the ninth round of a ten-round sparring session, “Miranda executed something that I’d been telling him to do the whole workout – left, right hand, left hook – and he knocked him [Dawson] down. It was devastating for me because I don’t want to see something like that, but it happened. He was hurt. He tried to get up. He went down again and got up. I screamed to Rafael Garcia [Dawson’s assistant trainer], ‘Come and help him.'”

On September 14th, Diaz told this writer that Dawson was knocked down by Miranda, fell on his face, tried to get up, and pitched face-first into the ring ropes.

On September 19th, John Scully (Dawson’s trainer) added fuel to the fire when he sent out a mass email that read, “Just a note for future reference: If before a big fight – or ANY fight, really – it doesn’t matter if my boxer has gotten hit by a tractor trailer three days ago, been dropped seven times in sparring, lost 42 pounds in the steam room over the course of one week, and just GOT dropped to his knees in the gym five minutes before you ask . . . I’m still telling you he feels great. What else can a fighter or his trainer be expected to say?”

So what really happened?

This past week, I spoke with Kane, Scully, and Dawson. They all told me the same thing.

“I got knocked down,” Chad acknowledged. “But it was a flash knockdown. I wasn’t hurt. I got back up right away and finished the rest of the sparring session. Stuff like that happens all the time in boxing. The only reason we didn’t talk about it was, I knew people would make a big deal out of it and it wasn’t a big deal.”

Scully elaborated on that theme, saying, “Chad was sparring ten rounds that day. He got hit with a left hook in the ninth round. He went down. He got up. He was fine. He finished the round and then he finished the next round, so he sparred all ten rounds, which was what we planned for the day.”

“There’s some self-serving talk in what Miguel Diaz is saying,” Scully added. “That might be why he’s exaggerating the way he is. If you read what Miguel said, it was Miranda hit Chad with a combination that Miguel was telling him to throw. Do you really think that we would have allowed Chad to finish the round and then spar another round after that if he’d been hurt like Miguel says?”

“I wasn’t in the gym,” Kane told me. “But I heard the rumors and I asked about them. I believe what Chad and Scully are saying.”

I believe Chad and Scully too.

But that raises another issue. Suppose Dawson had been dazed or, worse, concussed? What would have been the proper course of action to follow?

The issue might be defused insofar as Chad is concerned. But it’s still out there for incidents involving other fighters in the future.

We live in the real world. Boxing is about making money. The bigger the fight, the more money will be lost if a fight is cancelled because a fighter has suffered a debilitating blow to the head in training.

Here, the thoughts of Dr. Margaret Goodman (former chief ringside physician and chairperson of the medical advisory board for the Nevada State Athletic Commission) are instructive.

“You don’t have to be knocked unconscious to suffer a concussion,” Dr. Goodman says. “That’s one reason a ring doctor evaluates each fighter immediately after every fight. There’s only one thing to do if a fighter is dazed in the gym. You take him to an emergency room or a comparable facility with similarly skilled doctors to be evaluated immediately. And you keep him there for a while after he has been examined so he can be observed by trained professionals.”

“There are no studies that I’m aware of on this point,” Dr. Goodman continues. “But my educated guess is that, more often than not when a fighter dies in a fight, it comes after he was hurt in the gym. If someone suffers a concussion, even a minor concussion, and is hit in the head again a week or two afterward, the damage can be additive, permanent, and even life-threatening. If a fighter is knocked out in a fight, he isn’t allowed to take punishment to the head for at least forty-five days. You can’t have a different safety standard for a fighter who suffers head trauma in the gym. And you certainly can’t have a bunch of lay people in the fighter’s camp saying, ‘It’s okay; he can still fight.’ That’s a recipe for disaster.”

For those who think that Dr. Goodman is overly cautious and overly protective of fighters, the thoughts of Freddie Roach are equally instructive. Asked what he’d do if one of his fighters suffered a debilitating blow to the head while preparing for a megafight, Roach answered, “The trainer’s job is to protect his fighter. You report something like that to the proper authorities. If you don’t, that’s how fighters get killed.”

All of this leads to one last issue: If Dawson wasn’t thrown off his game by head trauma suffered in sparring, why was he so outclassed by Ward? Is Andre that good?

John Scully thinks he knows the answer.

“After the fight, Chad was a gracious loser,” Scully says. “He told everyone that Ward is a great champion and the better man won. I respect Chad for that, but I want to tell you something. And this isn’t an excuse, because when someone tells the truth, it isn’t an excuse.”

“Chad is a light-heavyweight,” Scully continues. “Chad has fought for years at 175 pounds. And to get this fight, he had to go down to 168. Chad had trouble making weight, a lot of trouble. The weight didn’t come off like he thought it would. Making weight weakened him badly. He had to lose something like nine pounds the last two days. That’s why he looked the way he did in the fight. It wasn’t about being hurt in the gym because that didn’t happen. When a fighter goes down to a weight division lower than the one he’s been fighting in for years, he’s not the same fighter. Look at Chris Byrd against Shaun George. Byrd went from heavyweight to 175 pounds for that fight, and Shaun knocked him all over the place before he knocked Byrd out. Byrd beat Vitali Klitschko, David Tua, and Evander Holyfield. None of those guys even knocked him down. And no disrespect to Shaun George; are you telling me that he hits harder than those guys hit? Andre Ward is good. But it was the weight, man. It was the weight.”

As for Dawson, he won’t talk about the weight other than to say, “I don’t expect to fight at 168 pounds again. I’ll be back at 175 and I expect to be successful.”

Thomas Hauser can be reached by email at thauser@rcn.com. His most recent book (And the New: An Inside Look at Another Year in Boxing) was published recently by the University of Arkansas Press.

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Thomas Hauser’s Literary Notes: Johnny Greaves Tells a Sad Tale

Published

1 day ago

May 11, 2025

Thomas Hauser

Johnny Greaves was a professional loser. He had one hundred professional fights between 2007 and 2013, lost 96 of them, scored one knockout, and was stopped short of the distance twelve times. There was no subtlety in how his role was explained to him: “Look, Johnny; professional boxing works two ways. You’re either a ticket-seller and make money for the promoter, in which case you get to win fights. If you don’t sell tickets but can look after yourself a bit, you become an opponent and you fight to lose.”

By losing, he could make upwards of one thousand pounds for a night‘s work.

Greaves grew up with an alcoholic father who beat his children and wife. Johnny learned how to survive the beatings, which is what his career as a fighter would become. He was a scared, angry, often violent child who was expelled from school and found solace in alcohol and drugs.

The fighters Greaves lost to in the pros ran the gamut from inept local favorites to future champions Liam Walsh, Anthony Crolla, Lee Selby, Gavin Rees, and Jack Catterall. Alcohol and drugs remained constants in his life. He fought after drinking, smoking weed, and snorting cocaine on the night before – and sometimes on the day of – a fight. On multiple occasions, he came close to committing suicide. His goal in boxing ultimately became to have one hundred professional fights.

On rare occasions, two professional losers – “journeymen,” they’re called in The UK – are matched against each other. That was how Greaves got three of the four wins on his ledger. On September 29, 2013, he fought the one hundredth and final fight of his career against Dan Carr in London’s famed York Hall. Carr had a 2-42-2 ring record and would finish his career with three wins in ninety outings. Greaves-Carr was a fight that Johnny could win. He emerged triumphant on a four-round decision.

The Johnny Greaves Story, told by Greaves with the help of Adam Darke (Pitch Publishing) tells the whole sordid tale. Some of Greaves’s thoughts follow:

* “We all knew why we were there, and it wasn’t to win. The home fighters were the guys who had sold all the tickets and were deemed to have some talent. We were the scum. We knew our role. Give some young prospect a bit of a workout, keep out of the way of any big shots, lose on points but take home a wedge of cash, and fight again next week.”

* “If you fought too hard and won, then you wouldn’t get booked for any more shows. If you swung for the trees and got cut or knocked out, then you couldn’t fight for another 28 days. So what were you supposed to do? The answer was to LOOK like you were trying to win but be clever in the process. Slip and move, feint, throw little shots that were rangefinders, hold on, waste time. There was an art to this game, and I was quickly learning what a cynical business it was.”

* “The unknown for the journeyman was always how good your opponent might be. He could be a future world champion. Or he might be some hyped-up nightclub bouncer with a big following who was making lots of money for the promoter.”

* “No matter how well I fought, I wasn’t going to be getting any decisions. These fights weren’t scored fairly. The referees and judges understood who the paymasters were and they played the game. What was the point of having a go and being the best version of you if nobody was going to recognize or reward it?”

* “When I first stepped into the professional arena, I believed I was tough. believed that nobody could stop me. But fight by fight, those ideas were being challenged and broken down. Once you know that you can be hurt, dropped and knocked out, you’re never quite the same fighter.”

* “I had started off with a dream, an idea of what boxing was and what it would do for me. It was going to be a place where I could prove my toughness. A place that I could escape to and be someone else for a while. For a while, boxing was that place. But it wore me down to the point that I stopped caring. I’d grown sick and tired of it all. I wished that I could feel pride at what I’d achieved. But most of the time, I just felt like a loser.”

* “The fights were getting much more difficult, the damage to my body and my psyche taking longer and longer to repair after each defeat. I was putting myself in more and more danger with each passing fight. I was getting hurt more often and stopped more regularly. Even with the 28-day [suspensions], I didn’t have time to heal. I was staggering from one fight to the next and picking up more injuries along the way.”

* “I was losing my toughness and resilience. When that’s all you’ve ever had, it’s a hard thing to accept. Drink and drugs had always been present in my life. But now they became a regular part of my pre-fight preparation. It helped to shut out the fear and quieted the thoughts and worries that I shouldn’t be doing this anymore.”

* “My body was broken. My hands were constantly sore with blisters and cuts. I had early arthritis in my hip and my teeth were a mess. I looked an absolute state and inside I felt worse. But I couldn’t stop fighting yet. Not before the 100.”

* “I had abused myself time after time and stood in front of better men, taking a beating when I could have been sensible and covered up. At the start, I was rarely dropped or stopped. Now it was becoming a regular part of the game. Most of the guys I was facing were a lot better than me. This was mainly about survival.”

* “Was my brain f***ed from taking too many punches? I knew it was, to be honest. I could feel my speech changing and memory going. I was mentally unwell and shouldn’t have been fighting but the promoters didn’t care. Johnny Greaves was still a good booking. Maybe an even better one now that he might get knocked out.”

* “Nobody gave a f*** about me and whether I lived or died. I didn’t care about that much either. But the thought of being humiliated, knocked out in front of all those people; that was worse than the thought of dying. The idea of being exposed for what I was – a nobody.”

* “I was a miserable bastard in real life. A depressive downbeat mouthy little f***er. Everything I’ve done has been to mask the feeling that I’m worthless. That I have no value. The drinks and the drugs just helped me to forget that for a while. I still frighten myself a lot. My thoughts scare me. Do I really want to be here for the next thirty or forty years? I don’t know. If suicide wasn’t so impactful on people around you, I would have taken that leap. I don’t enjoy life and never have.”

So . . . Any questions?

****

Steve Albert was Showtime’s blow-by-blow commentator for two decades. But his reach extended far beyond boxing.

Albert’s sojourn through professional sports began in high school when he was a ball boy for the New York Knicks. Over the years, he was behind the microphone for more than a dozen teams in eleven leagues including four NBA franchises.

Putting the length of that trajectory in perspective . . . As a ballboy, Steve handed bottles of water and towels to a Knicks back-up forward named Phil Jackson. Later, they worked together as commentators for the New Jersey Nets. Then Steve provided the soundtrack for some of Jackson’s triumphs when he won eleven NBA championships as head coach of the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers.

It’s also a matter of record that Steve’s oldest brother, Marv, was arguably the greatest play-by-play announcer in NBA history. And brother Al enjoyed a successful career behind the microphone after playing professional hockey.

Now Steve has written a memoir titled A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Broadcast Booth. Those who know him know that Steve doesn’t like to say bad things about people. And he doesn’t here. Nor does he delve into the inner workings of sports media or the sports dream machine. The book is largely a collection of lighthearted personal recollections, although there are times when the gravity of boxing forces reflection.

“Fighters were unlike any other professional athletes I had ever encountered,” Albert writes. “Many were products of incomprehensible backgrounds, fiercely tough neighborhoods, ghettos and, in some cases, jungles. Some got into the sport because they were bullied as children. For others, boxing was a means of survival. In many cases, it was an escape from a way of life that most people couldn’t even fathom.”

At one point, Steve recounts a ringside ritual that he followed when he was behind the microphone for Showtime Boxing: “I would precisely line up my trio of beverages – coffee, water, soda – on the far edge of the table closest to the ring apron. Perhaps the best advice I ever received from Ferdie [broadcast partner Ferdie Pacheco] was early on in my blow-by-blow career – ‘Always cover your coffee at ringside with an index card unless you like your coffee with cream, sugar, and blood.’”

Writing about the prelude to the infamous Holyfield-Tyson “bite fight,” Albert recalls, “I remember thinking that Tyson was going to do something unusual that night. I had this sinking feeling in my gut that he was going to pull something exceedingly out of the ordinary. His grousing about Holyfield’s head butts in the first fight added to my concern. [But] nobody could have foreseen what actually happened. Had I opened that broadcast with, ‘Folks, tonight I predict that Mike Tyson will bite off a chunk of Evander Holyfield’s ear,’ some fellas in white coats might have approached me and said, ‘Uh, Steve, could you come with us.'”

And then there’s my favorite line in the book: “I once asked a fighter if he was happily married,” Albert recounts. “He said, ‘Yes, but my wife’s not.'”

“All I ever wanted was to be a sportscaster,” Albert says in closing. “I didn’t always get it right, but I tried to do my job with honesty and integrity. For forty-five years, calling games was my life. I think it all worked out.”

Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His next book – The Most Honest Sport: Two More Years Inside Boxing – will be published this month and is available for preorder at:

https://www.amazon.com/Most-Honest-Sport-Inside-Boxing/dp/1955836329

In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

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Argentina’s Fernando Martinez Wins His Rematch with Kazuto Ioka

Published

2 days ago

May 11, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Argentina's-Fernando-Martinez-Wins-His-Rematch-with-Kazuto-Ioka

In an excellent fight climaxed by a furious 12^th round, Argentina’s Fernando Daniel Martinez came off the deck to win his rematch with Kazuto Ioka and retain his piece of the world 115-pound title. The match was staged at Ioka’s familiar stomping grounds, the Ota-City General Gymnasium in Tokyo.

In their first meeting on July 7 of last year in Tokyo, Martinez was returned the winner on scores of 117-111, 116-112, and a bizarre 120-108. The rematch was slated for late December, but Martinez took ill a few hours before the weigh-in and the bout was postponed.

The 33-year-old Martinez, who came in sporting a 17-0 (9) record, was a 7-2 favorite to win the sequel, but there were plenty of reasons to favor Ioka, 36, aside from his home field advantage. The first Japanese male fighter to win world titles in four weight classes, Ioka was 3-0 in rematches and his long-time trainer Ismael Salas was on a nice roll. Salas was 2-0 last weekend in Times Square, having handled upset-maker Rolly Romero and Reito Tsutsumi who was making his pro debut.

But the fourth time was not a charm for Ioka (31-4-1) who seemingly pulled the fight out of the fire in round 10 when he pitched the Argentine to the canvas with a pair of left hooks, but then wasn’t able to capitalize on the momentum swing.

Martinez set a fast pace and had Ioka fighting off his back foot for much of the fight. Beginning in round seven, Martinez looked fatigued, but the Argentine was conserving his energy for the championship rounds. In the end, he won the bout on all three cards: 114-113, 116-112, 117-110.

Up next for Fernando Martinez may be a date with fellow unbeaten Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez, the lineal champion at 115. San Antonio’s Rodriguez is a huge favorite to keep his title when he defends against South Africa’s obscure Phumelela Cafu on July 19 in Frisco, Texas.

As for Ioka, had he won today’s rematch, that may have gotten him over the hump in so far as making it into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. True, winning titles in four weight classes is no great shakes when the bookends are only 10 pounds apart, but Ioka is still a worthy candidate.

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Emanuel Navarrete Survives a Bloody Battle with Charly Suarez in San Diego

Published

2 days ago

May 11, 2025

David A. Avila

Emanuel-Navarrete-Survives-a-Bloody-Battle-with-Charly-Suarez-in-San-Diego

In a torrid battle Mexico’s Emanuel “Vaquero” Navarrete and his staccato attack staved off the herky-jerky non-stop assaults of Philippine’s Charly Suarez to win by technical decision and retain the WBO super feather world title on Saturday.

What do they feed these guys?

Navarrete (40-2-1, 32 KOs) and his elongated arms managed to connect enough to compensate against the surprising Suarez (18-1, 10 KOs) who wowed the crowd at Pechanga Arena in San Diego.

An accidental clash of heads opened a cut on the side of Navarrete’s left eye and forced a stoppage midway through the fight.

From the opening round Navarrete used his windmill style of attack with punches from different angles that caught Suarez multiple times early. It did not matter. Suarez fired back with impunity and was just as hungry to punch it out with the Mexican fighter.

It was savage.

Every time Navarrete connected solidly, he seemed to pause and check out the damage. Bad idea. Suarez would immediately counter with bombs of his own and surprise the champion with his resilience and tenacity.

Wherever they found Suarez they should look for more, because the Filipino fighter from Manila was ferocious and never out of his depth.

Around the sixth round the Mexican fighter seemed a little drained and puzzled at the tireless attacks coming from Suarez. During an exchange of blows a cut opened up on Navarrete and it was ruled an accidental clash of heads by the referee. Blood streamed down the side of Navarrete’s face and it was cleared by the ringside physician.

But at the opening of the eighth round, the fight was stopped and the ringside physician ruled the cut was too bad to continue. The California State Athletic Commission looked at tape of the round when the cut opened to decipher if it was an accidental butt or a punch that caused the cut. It was unclear so the referee’s call of accidental clash of heads stood as the final ruling.

Score cards from the judges saw Navarrete the winner by scores of 78-75, 77-76 twice. He retains the WBO title.

Interim IBF Lightweight Title

The sharp-shooting Raymond “Danger” Muratalla (23-0, 17 KOs) maneuvered past Russia’s Zaur Abdullaev (20-2, 12 KOs) by unanimous decision to win the interim IBF lightweight title after 12 rounds.

Both fighters were strategic in their approach with Muratalla switching from orthodox to southpaw at various times of the fight. Neither fighter was ever able to dominant any round.

Defense proved the difference between the two lightweights. Muratalla was able to slip more blows than Abdullaev and that proved the difference. The fighter from Fontana, California was able to pierce Abdullaev’s guard more often than not, especially with counter punches.

Abdullaev was never out of the fight. The Russian fighter was able to change tactics and counter the counters midway through the fight. It proved effective especially to the body. But it was not enough to offset Muratalla’s accuracy.

There were no knockdowns and after 12 rounds the judges scored it 118-110, 119-109 twice for Muratalla who now becomes the mandatory for the IBF lightweight title should Vasyl Lomachenko return to defend it.

Muratalla was brief.

“He was a tough fighter,” said Muratalla. “My defense is something I work on a lot.”

Perla Wins

Super flyweight Perla Bazaldua (2-0) eased past Mona Ward (0-2) with a polished display of fighting at length and inside.

Combination punching and defense allowed Bazaldua to punch in-between Ward’s attacks and force the St. Louis fighter to clinch repeatedly. But Ward hung in there despite taking a lot of blows. After four rounds the Los Angeles-based Bazaldua was scored the winner 40-36 on all three cards. Bazaldua signed a long term contract with Top Rank in March.

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

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