Featured Articles
Abner Mares, Santa Cruz Keeps Titles at Staples

LOS ANGELES-WBC junior featherweight titleholder Abner Mares always finds a way to win and once again proved his adapability by winning a unanimous decision victory against the fleet Anselmo Moreno of Panama on Saturday. Mares was like a relentless pit bull.
Mares (25-0-1, 13 KOs) retained the title against Moreno (33-2-1, 12 KOs) in front of a partisan crowd at the Staples Center that saw a number of action-packed fights on the Golden Boy Promotions fight card.
The Southern California based prizefighter proved against the elusive Moreno that he could adapt but it was not easy.
Mares came out aggressively and caught Moreno was some combinations. The Panamanian fighter tried to hold but the Californian would not allow it and continued punching in round one.
The second round saw Mares pursue and exchange whenever he was close to Moreno. Body shot after body shot was rained on the Panamanian. A counter left hook by Mares connected big for the champion. Moreno also landed a counter left cross.
Moreno seemed to find his rhythm in the third round with some long counter left hands that connected. Mares returned to the body and a counter left hook landed in a very close round. Moreno looked more comfortable.
The titleholder Mares stepped on the gas in round four with some relentless pursuit and combinations to the head and body. A low blow by Mares stopped the fight, but when it resumed Mares attacked furiously until the end of the round.
Mares kept the pressure on Moreno and caught him with a right to the chin that the Panamanian never saw. Slowly he went down and looked groggy but got up to finish the round in round five. It was Mares in pursuit until the end. It was Moreno's first time ever on his knees.
“He had never been down so that felt good,” said Mares of his knockdown of Moreno.
The Panamanian had no excuse.
“I got careless when I went down,” said Moreno.
The overhand rights connected big time for Mares in round six as Moreno tried to rally from the previous round. Mares trapped Moreno in the corner for what seemed 30 seconds and landed some big overhand rights again.
“I could tell he felt my power and aggression,” Mares said.
Despite a low blow that slowed the fight in round seven it was the Panamanian's best round in a while as he landed a perfect three-punch combination. Mares landed some combos too in a very close and competitive round.
It was the real men's round as both fighters stood in the corner and bombed away. A sizzling right hand counter sent Moreno flying across the ring with Mares in quick pursuit in round eight. But he couldn't muster enough to keep the Panamanian from recovering quickly.
“He did take advantage when I took too long,” Mares said. “He's a super champion he knew me well.”
Both fighters exchanged combinations to the head and body in round nine with Mares landing the counter right and Moreno landing the counter right hook. Both exchanged evenly.
Mares used the jab effectively in a slower round. When the action picked up it was the body attack and counter rights that connected for the champion. Moreno had some moments but not as many as Mares in round 10.
A point deduction for holding and pulling cost Moreno the round as he caught Mares with some good body shots but didn't win round 11.
Both fired away with conviction in the final round but their weariness proved to make them sloppy. Mares connected with some counter rights and Moreno used some stiff jabs and right hooks but neither had enough power to hurt the other.
All three judges scored it for Mares 116-110 twice by judges Marty Denkin and David Sutherland while judge James Jen Kin scored it 120-106.
IBF champ Santa Cruz Wins
IBF bantamweight titleholder Leo “El Terremoto” Santa Cruz performed his usual seek and destroy battle plan against Mexico's super tough Victor Zaleta and once again it was a fight filled with enough blows to fill two fights.
East L.A.'s Santa Cruz fought toe to toe in the first two rounds with Zaleta who quickly discovered that he could not match the champion's furious pace. He began to box and move but Santa Cruz pursued with relentless fury and caught the Mexican fighter with shots to the body that echoed in the arena and resulted in two knockdowns in seven rounds.
It seemed Zaleta would quit but he never seemed to look for a way out and tried hardily to return fire. Santa Cruz was just too strong.
“I have the heart and blood of a Mexican fighter,” said Zaleta (20-3-1, 10 KOs).
Round nine saw Santa Cruz even more aggressive but Zaleta tried for a knockout blow and during an exchange of right hands, it was Santa Cruz who connected perfectly to the chin with a counter right cross. Down went Zaleta for a knockout. Referee Ray Corona stopped the fight at 1:42 of the round.
“He was a strong fighter,” said Santa Cruz (22-0-1, 13 KOs). “I finally caught him and he went down.”
Santa Cruz was ahead on all three score cards 80-70 twice and 79-71 once.
The lanky pressure fighter said he wants to move up a weight division in two or three fights.
Angulo
One punch proved that Alfredo “El Perro” Angulo (21-2, 18 KOs) is back when he connected during a furious exchange to knock out Raul “El Tigre” Casarez (19-3, 9 KOs) with a left hook. It is perhaps the knockout of the year and Angulo ended the fight in 56 seconds to win his first fight of 2012.
“I knew the dog was going to come back,” said Angulo. “We worked a lot on defense.”
Angulo said he could fight in 20 minutes if necessary.
WBO champion Cleverly
WBO light heavyweight titleholder Nathan Cleverly (25-0, 12 KOs) of Wales was too fast, too strong and too much for South Dakota's Shawn Hawk (22-3-1, 16 KOs) who did well until the body shots began. The two fought rather evenly with Cleverly landing more and just enough to win every round. But beginning in round seven a flurry of body blows caused a sink in Hawk's knees and down he went twice in that round. The eight round saw Cleverly go back to the body and twice more Hawks sunk to the canvas. Referee Tony Crebs ended the fight at 1:33 of the round.
“It was a great experience. He was a tough opponent but I eventually broke him down and it paid off and I got the victory,” said Cleverly fighting for the first time in the U.S.A. “I like to take risks but I got caught with too many punches.”
Other bouts
San Diego's Antonio Orozco (16-0, 12 KOs) stopped Riverside's Danny Escobar (8-2, 5 KOs) after six rounds of brutal back and forth punching. An Orozco left hook caught Escobar flush and the San Diego powerhouse followed up with six more blows to end the fight by knockout at 2:06 of round six in the junior welterweight clash.
“This was a great learning experience,” said Orozco, who is managed by Frank Espinoza. “I'm ready for the next one.”
Former amateur star Chris Pearson (6-0, 5 KOs) needed only 44 seconds to end the battle of left-handers with Jeremy Marts (8-13, 6 KOs) in a junior middleweight fight. Pearson's speed was apparent and he used it wisely against the aggressive Marks who didn't see the blow.
Northern California's Alonso Loeza (3-7-1) upset Zach “Kid Yamika” Wohlman (4-1-1) with a come-from-behind knockout rally at 17 seconds of round four in a welterweight fight. Wohlman was ahead after two rounds but spent a lot of energy attempting to knock out the rugged Loeza. A right hand dropped Wohlman at the end of round three who beat the count but was wobbly returning to his corner. Loeza poured on the blows in the fourth and referee John Taylor stopped the fight.
Montebello's David Reyes (2-2-1) upset Texan Isaac Torres's (2-0-1) winning streak in getting a majority draw after four rounds. Torres started strong but was confused by Reyes' movement especially in the last two rounds. The scores were 39-37 Torres and 38-38 twice for the majority draw.
Robert Easter (1-0) of Cincinnati used a body attack to soften up Nebraska's Eddie Corona (0-2) before pummeling him and forcing the referee to stop the lightweight fight at 2:39 of round two. It was Easter's pro debut.
Featured Articles
Avila Perspective, Chap. 322: Super Welter Week in SoCal

Two below-the-radar super welterweight stars show off their skills this weekend from different parts of Southern California.
One in particular, Charles Conwell, co-headlines a show in Oceanside against a hard-hitting Mexican while another super welter star Sadriddin Akhmedov faces another Mexican hitter in Commerce.
Take your pick.
The super welterweight division is loaded with talent at the moment. If Terence Crawford remained in the division he would be at the top of the class, but he is moving up several weight divisions.
Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) faces Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs) a tall knockout puncher from Los Mochis at the Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, Calif. on Saturday April 19. DAZN will stream the Golden Boy Promotions card that also features undisputed flyweight champion Gabriela Fundora. We’ll get to her later.
Conwell might be the best super welterweight out there aside from the big dogs like Vergil Ortiz, Serhii Bohachuk and Sebastian Fundora.
If you are not familiar with Conwell he comes from Cleveland, Ohio and is one of those fighters that other fighters know about. He is good.
He has the James “Lights Out” Toney kind of in-your-face-style where he anchors down and slowly deciphers the opponent’s tools and then takes them away piece by piece. Usually it’s systematic destruction. The kind you see when a skyscraper goes down floor by floor until it’s smoking rubble.
During the Covid days Conwell fought two highly touted undefeated super welters in Wendy Toussaint and Madiyar Ashkeyev. He stopped them both and suddenly was the boogie man of the super welterweight division.
Conwell will be facing Mexico’s taller Garcia who likes to trade blows as most Mexican fighters prefer, especially those from Sinaloa. These guys will be firing H bombs early.
Fundora
Co-headlining the Golden Boy card is Gabriela Fundora (15-0, 7 KOs) the undisputed flyweight champion of the world. She has all the belts and Mexico’s Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1, 3 KOs) wants them.
Gabriela Fundora is the sister of Sebastian Fundora who holds the men’s WBC and WBO super welterweight world titles. Both are tall southpaws with power in each hand to protect the belts they accumulated.
Six months ago, Fundora met Argentina’s Gabriela Alaniz in Las Vegas to determine the undisputed flyweight champion. The much shorter Alaniz tried valiantly to scrap with Fundora and ran into a couple of rocket left hands.
Mexico’s Badillo is an undefeated flyweight from Mexico City who has battled against fellow Mexicans for years. She has fought one world champion in Asley Gonzalez the current super flyweight world titlist. They met years ago with Badillo coming out on top.
Does Badillo have the skill to deal with the taller and hard-hitting Fundora?
When a fighter has a six-inch height advantage like Fundora, it is almost impossible to out-maneuver especially in two-minute rounds. Ask Alaniz who was nearly decapitated when she tried.
This will be Badillo’s first pro fight outside of Mexico.
Commerce Casino
Kazakhstan’s Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0, 13 KOs) is another dangerous punching super welterweight headlining a 360 Promotions card against Mexico’s Elias Espadas (23-6, 16 KOs) on Saturday at the Commerce Casino.
UFC Fight Pass will stream the 360 Promotions card of about eight bouts.
Akhmedov is another Kazakh puncher similar to the great Gennady “GGG” Golovkin who terrorized the middleweight division for a decade. He doesn’t have the same polish or dexterity but doesn’t lack pure punching power.
It’s another test for the super welterweight who is looking to move up the ladder in the very crowded 154-pound weight division. 360 Promotions already has a top contender in Ukraine’s Serhii Bohachuk who nearly defeated Vergil Ortiz a year ago.
Could Bohachuk and Akhmedov fight each other if nothing else materializes?
That’s a question for another day.
Fights to Watch
Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. Charles Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) vs. Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs); Gabriela Fundora (15-0) vs Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1).
Sat. UFC Fight Pass 6 p.m. Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0) vs Elias Espadas (23-6).
To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE
Featured Articles
TSS Salutes Thomas Hauser and his Bernie Award Cohorts

The Boxing Writers Association of America has announced the winners of its annual Bernie Awards competition. The awards, named in honor of former five-time BWAA president and frequent TSS contributor Bernard Fernandez, recognize outstanding writing in six categories as represented by stories published the previous year.
Over the years, this venerable website has produced a host of Bernie Award winners. In 2024, Thomas Hauser kept the tradition alive. A story by Hauser that appeared in these pages finished first in the category “Boxing News Story.” Titled “Ryan Garcia and the New York State Athletic Commission,” the story was published on June 23. You can read it HERE.
Hauser also finished first in the category of “Investigative Reporting” for “The Death of Ardi Ndembo,” a story that ran in the (London) Guardian. (Note: Hauser has owned this category. This is his 11th first place finish for “Investigative Reporting”.)
Thomas Hauser, who entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the class of 2019, was honored at last year’s BWAA awards dinner with the A.J. Leibling Award for Outstanding Boxing Writing. The list of previous winners includes such noted authors as W.C. Heinz, Budd Schulberg, Pete Hamill, and George Plimpton, to name just a few.
The Leibling Award is now issued intermittently. The most recent honorees prior to Hauser were Joyce Carol Oates (2015) and Randy Roberts (2019).
Roberts, a Distinguished Professor of History at Purdue University, was tabbed to write the Hauser/Leibling Award story for the glossy magazine for BWAA members published in conjunction with the organization’s annual banquet. Regarding Hauser’s most well-known book, his Muhammad Ali biography, Roberts wrote, “It is nearly impossible to overestimate the importance of the book to our understanding of Ali and his times.” An earlier book by Hauser, “The Black Lights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing,” garnered this accolade: “Anyone who wants to understand boxing today should begin by reading ‘The Black Lights’.”
A panel of six judges determined the Bernie Award winners for stories published in 2024. The stories they evaluated were stripped of their bylines and other identifying marks including the publication or website for which the story was written.
Other winners:
Boxing Event Coverage: Tris Dixon
Boxing Column: Kieran Mulvaney
Boxing Feature (Over 1,500 Words): Lance Pugmire
Boxing Feature (Under 1,500 Words): Chris Mannix
The Dixon, Mulvaney, and Pugmire stories appeared in Boxing Scene; the Mannix story in Sports Illustrated.
The Bernie Award recipients will be honored at the forthcoming BWAA dinner on April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in the heart of Times Square. (For more information, visit the BWAA website). Two days after the dinner, an historic boxing tripleheader will be held in Times Square, the logistics of which should be quite interesting. Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney, and Teofimo Lopez share top billing.
To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE
Featured Articles
Mekhrubon Sanginov, whose Heroism Nearly Proved Fatal, Returns on Saturday

To say that Mekhrubon Sanginov is excited to resume his boxing career would be a great understatement. Sanginov, ranked #9 by the WBA at 154 pounds before his hiatus, last fought on July 8, 2022.
He was in great form before his extended leave, having scored four straight fast knockouts, advancing his record to 13-0-1. Had he remained in Las Vegas, where he had settled after his fifth pro fight, his career may have continued on an upward trajectory, but a trip to his hometown of Dushanbe, Tajikistan, turned everything haywire. A run-in with a knife-wielding bully nearly cost him his life, stalling his career for nearly three full years.
Sanginov was exiting a restaurant in Dushanbe when he saw a man, plainly intoxicated, harassing another man, an innocent bystander. Mekhrubon intervened and was stabbed several times with a long knife. One of the puncture wounds came perilously close to puncturing his heart.
“After he stabbed me, I ran after him and hit him and caught him to hold for the police,” recollects Sanginov. “There was a lot of confusion when the police arrived. At first, the police were not certain what had happened.
“By the time I got to the hospital, I had lost two liters of blood, or so I was told. After I was patched up, one of the surgeons said to me, ‘Give thanks to God because he gave you a second life.’ It is like I was born a second time.”
“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have happened in any city,” he adds. (A story about the incident on another boxing site elicited this comment from a reader: “Good man right there. World would be a better place if more folk were willing to step up when it counts.”)
Sanginov first laced on a pair of gloves at age 10 and was purportedly 105-14 as an amateur. Growing up, the boxer he most admired was Roberto Duran. “Muhammad Ali will always be the greatest and [Marvin] Hagler was great too, but Duran was always my favorite,” he says.
During his absence from the ring, Sanginov married a girl from Tajikistan and became a father. His son Makhmud was born in Las Vegas and has dual citizenship. “Ideally,” he says, “I would like to have three more children. Two more boys and the last one a daughter.”
He also put on a great deal of weight. When he returned to the gym, his trainer Bones Adams was looking at a cruiserweight. But gradually the weight came off – “I had to give up one of my hobbies; I love to eat,” he says – and he will be resuming his career at 154. “Although I am the same weight as before, I feel stronger now. Before I was more of a boy, now I am a full-grown man,” says Sanginov who turned 29 in February.
He has a lot of rust to shed. Because of all those early knockouts, he has answered the bell for only eight rounds in the last four years. Concordantly, his comeback fight on Saturday could be described as a soft re-awakening. Sanginov’s opponent Mahonri Montes, an 18-year pro from Mexico, has a decent record (36-10-2, 25 KOs) but has been relatively inactive and is only 1-3-1 in his last five. Their match at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, California, is slated for eight rounds.
On May 10, Ardreal Holmes (17-0) faces Erickson Lubin (26-2) on a ProBox card in Kissimmee, Florida. It’s an IBF super welterweight title eliminator, meaning that the winner (in theory) will proceed directly to a world title fight.
Sanginov will be watching closely. He and Holmes were scheduled to meet in March of 2022 in the main event of a ShoBox card on Showtime. That match fell out when Sanginov suffered an ankle injury in sparring.
If not for a twist of fate, that may have been Mekhrubon Sanginov in that IBF eliminator, rather than Ardreal Holmes. We will never know, but one thing we do know is that Mekhrubon’s world title aspirations were too strong to be ruined by a knife-wielding bully.
To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE
-
Featured Articles4 weeks ago
Bernard Fernandez Reflects on His Special Bond with George Foreman
-
Featured Articles4 weeks ago
A Paean to George Foreman (1949-2025), Architect of an Amazing Second Act
-
Featured Articles4 weeks ago
Spared Prison by a Lenient Judge, Chordale Booker Pursues a World Boxing Title
-
Featured Articles4 weeks ago
Sebastian Fundora TKOs Chordale Booker in Las Vegas
-
Featured Articles3 weeks ago
Boxing Odds and Ends: The Wacky and Sad World of Livingstone Bramble and More
-
Featured Articles4 weeks ago
Avila Perspective, Chap. 318: Aussie Action, Vegas and More
-
Featured Articles3 weeks ago
Avila Perspective, Chap. 319: Rematches in Las Vegas, Cancun and More
-
Featured Articles3 weeks ago
Ringside at the Fontainebleau where Mikaela Mayer Won her Rematch with Sandy Ryan