“Lee Samuels Is A Friend of Boxing”

Published

12 years ago

November 16, 2012

goodguysruiz Lee Samuels (center) receives BWAA Good Guy Award in 2007, with cohort Ricardo Jimenez (right), and poses with ex heavyweight champ John Ruiz. (BWAA)

It’s easy to lose oneself during the presidential election season. All too often, it seems to bring out the worst in us, and that’s no matter which side of the aisle you prefer. Instead of cooler (and let’s face it, more tolerant and even logical) heads prevailing, we often default to something as basely despicable as dehumanizing those with whom we don’t readily see eye-to-eye.

Luckily for most us, we only have to deal with it every four years. While it seems everyone becomes a political pundit during the presidential election process, most of us go back to our preferred pastimes after it is all said and done, and thank goodness for it.

Not so with boxing, because boxing’s political season is never over. Something big seems to happen every day, and it is quite easy to get riled up in the muck of it all. How many caricatures do we see daily of Bob Arum or Oscar De La Hoya? How about the latest Twitter scuff between Floyd Mayweather and 50 Cent?

In reality, though, people behind the scenes of anything we like to follow (boxing, politics, etc.) are just that — people. One of those people, Lee Samuels from Top Rank, was given a lifetime achievement award this week by the WBC and inducted into their Legends of Boxing Museum, along with his hardworking co-workers Ricardo Jimenez and Angie Jackson.

It’s easy to denigrate decisions of faceless entities like the WBC and promotional outfits like Top Rank, but when we get too wrapped up in wearing our omniscient judging hats, we far too often miss opportunities to recognize some really good people along the way. Let’s stop doing that.

Now, I’m no big shot in the boxing world. Heck, I’m not even a medium shot, but I’ve been fortunate enough to be around enough of those types (as well as my fellow little people) to know that Lee Samuels is by all accounts one of boxing’s good guys. Samuels has been with Top Rank for what amounts to be around two decades now, and I assure you anyone in a business like boxing for that long without ending up portrayed as a cartoon figure must know something or other about the basic dignity of the human being.

“Lee Samuels is a friend of boxing,” WBC Executive Director Mauricio Sulaiman told me. “He is always willing to resolve any matter at anytime, always with a smile and a will to make people happy. We have known Lee for many years, and he is a true gentleman and a great asset to the sport of boxing.”

Hall-of-Famer broadcaster Al Bernstein concurs.

“I’ll tell you what, in thirty-something years of being involved in the sport of boxing, there’s a short list of people that I can probably say I’ve never had one moment, not a moment, of distress with,” Bernstein said.“Lee is one of those people, and in a way that’s amazing, because someone who is doing PR for a company you have to deal with sometimes as a news reporter or a journalist, you would think that no matter how nice or how accommodating a person is, there might have been some moments that were difficult…I’ve never had one with him.”

Bernstein called it a “privilege” to have worked closely in the same business with Samuels over the years. He said it wasn’t just that Samuels was nice and accommodating, but that he was so while remaining exceptionally good at his job. So much so, he told me, that even Top Rank’s competitors come away from co-promotions with good impressions of him.

“He’s simply a delightful man,” Bernstein said. “I’m one of those people who’ve won that Good Guy Award [from the BWAA, this year]…believe me, the man that deserves it the most, the poster boy for the Good Guy Award, is Lee Samuels, who also won it [in 2006].”

Samuels has been involved in some form or fashion with many of the biggest fights in the last quarter century. His first big fight assignment was the 1985 Ray Leonard versus Marvin Hagler bout, and he’s been a key cog in helping Top Rank promote some of the biggest names in the sport ever since, including big money superstars like Oscar De La Hoya, Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather.

Before working for Bob Arum, Samuels cut his teeth as a sportswriter for the Philadelphia Bulletin. It was his dream job, he says, and he enjoyed it until the early 1980s when a decline in circulation doomed the paper to closure.

Speaking to Thomas Hauser some years back, Samuels recalled his newfound plight.

“So my problem was, what do I do now? I knew Frank Gelb, who had promoted some fights with Bob Arum. Frank told me that Bob was looking for a publicist to help him with a new boxing series on a new sports network called ESPN. On Frank's recommendation, Bob hired me to do publicity for his east coast ESPN shows.”

It was then that Samuels began his career in boxing, the fruits of which have earned him his recent recognition by the WBC.

Renowned matchmaker Ron Katz, who also worked with Top Rank at the time, remembers Samuels’ early days with the company fondly, and he was especially excited to tell me a story involving Samuels, Gelb, Bob Arum, fake policemen and a top ranked team of pranksters.

“This happened around the late eighties/early nineties,” he told me over the phone this week. “We had a doubleheader in Atlantic City, as we did many times in those days, and it was one of our ESPN shows the night before one of our big network shows.”

Katz said he was the architect behind the ordeal, but that he let everyone in on the fun, except our guy Lee, who he alternated referring to as “Leroy” and “Baby Leroy” during our conversation in a way that only someone from the state of New York could pull off.

“So what we did…poor Leroy…Frank Gelb, who was like the Godfather of Atlantic City back then, he had hooked up with Arum and delivered resorts for lots of the ESPN shows, Frank was the guy, so I got together with Frank and said, listen, I want to pull this prank on Baby Leroy and this is what I want to do.”

Katz relayed the plan, and Gelb helped make it happen.

“So Frank got these two guys to dress up in policeman uniforms. The guy was so hooked up there that he could do almost anything he wanted. We made up these phony papers…something to do with the IRS and back taxes…we were some real pranksters back then.”

Katz told me the lynchpin to the deal was having Bob Arum in on it, and that staging it during the show was likely what sealed the deal.

“These guys bust in right in the middle of the show and go right up to Lee and serve him these phony papers. Poor Lee, he turned white as a ghost! We were all sitting there biting out tongues, cracking up…I mean everybody knew about it! Even our ESPN announcers back then… everyone was in on it!”

Katz says the crew of pranksters had Samuels sweat it out the entire length of the fight card.

“Listen guys,” Arum told the fake policemen when they tried to haul Samuels out the door. “Just let him work the rest of the show and then we’ll go in the back and we’ll see what this is about, and if you have to take him to jail, you take him.”

By this time, Katz said people could hardly contain themselves, but they managed to leave Samuels in the lurch until the very end.

“So finally at the end of the night, we went to the back and told him we were all just pulling a prank on him.”

Katz told me Samuels took all of it in good humor, and after hearing from so many people who have worked with him over the years, it honestly doesn’t surprise me.

“Lee was just that kind of guy, and he still is, where he just took it all in stride, you know? He’s a great guy and always has been. He’s just a nice, nice guy and he does a good job,” Katz said with genuine affection in voice.

“That’s Leroy.”

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 322: Super Welter Week in SoCal

Published

10 hours ago

April 18, 2025

David A. Avila

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).

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TSS Salutes Thomas Hauser and his Bernie Award Cohorts

Published

2 days ago

April 16, 2025

TSS Press

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 11^th 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.

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Mekhrubon Sanginov, whose Heroism Nearly Proved Fatal, Returns on Saturday

Published

3 days ago

April 15, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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.

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