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“Lee Samuels Is A Friend of Boxing”
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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Mizuki Hiruta Dominates in her U.S. Debut and Omar Trinidad Wins Too at Commerce
Japan’s Mizuki Hiruta smashed through Mexico’s Maribel Ramirez with ease in winning by technical decision and local hero Omar Trinidad continued his assault on the featherweight division on Friday.
Hiruta (7-0, 2 KOs), who prefers to be called “Mimi,” made her American debut with an impressive performance against Mexican veteran Maribel Ramirez (15-11-4) and retained the WBO super flyweight world title by unanimous decision at Commerce Casino in Commerce, Calif.
The pink-haired Japanese southpaw champion quickly proved to be quicker, stronger and even better than advertised. In the opening round Ramirez landed on the floor twice after throwing errant blows. On one instance, it could have been ruled a knockdown but it was not a convincing blow.
In the second round, Ramirez again attacked and again was met with a Hiruta check right hook and down went the Mexican. This time referee Ray Corona gave the eight-count and the fight resumed.
It was Hiruta’s third title defense but this time it was on American soil. She seemed nervous by the prospect of getting a favorable review from the more than 700 fans inside the casino tent.
For more than a year Hiruta has been training off and on with Manny Robles in the L.A. area. Now that she has a visa, she has spent considerable time this year learning the tricks of the trade. They proved explosively effective.
Though Mexico City’s Ramirez has considerable experience against world champions, she discovered that Hiruta was not easy to hit. Often, the Japanese champion would slip and counter with precision.
It was an impressive American debut, though the fight was stopped in the eighth round after a collision of heads. The scores were tallied and all three saw Hiruta the winner by scores of 80-71 twice and 79-72.
“I’m so happy. I could have done much more,” said Hiruta through interpreter Yuriko Miyata. “I wanted to do more things that Manny Robles taught me.”
Trinidad Wins Too
Omar Trinidad (18-0-1, 13 KOs) discovered that challenger Mike Plania (31-5, 18 KOs) has a very good chin and staying power. But over 10 rounds Trinidad proved to be too fast and too busy for the Filipino challenger.
Immediately it was evident that the East L.A. featherweight was too quick and too busy for Plania who preferred a counter-puncher attack that never worked.
“He was strong,” said Trinidad. “He took everything.”
After 10 redundant rounds all three judges scored for Trinidad 100-90 twice and 99-91. He retains the WBC Continental Americas title.
Other Bouts
Ali Akhmedov (23-1, 17 KOs) blasted out Malcolm Jones (17-5-1) in less than two rounds. A dozen punches by Akhmedov forced referee Thomas Taylor to stop the super middleweight fight.
Iyana “Roxy” Verduzco (3-0) bloodied Lindsey Ellis in the first round and continued the speedy assault in the next two rounds. Referee Ray Corona saw enough and stopped the fight in favor of Verduzco at 1:34 of the third round.
Gloria Munguilla (7-1) and Brook Sibrian (5-2) lit up the boxing ring with a nonstop clash for eight rounds in their light flyweight fight. Munguilla proved effective with a slip-and-counter attack. Sibrian adjusted and made the fight closer in the last four rounds but all three judges favored Munguilla.
More Winners
Joshua Anton, Tayden Beltran, Adan Palma, and Alexander Gueche all won their bouts.
Photos credit: Al Applerose
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Avila Perspective, Chap. 309: 360 Promotions Opens with Trinidad, Mizuki and More
Avila Perspective, Chap. 309: 360 Promotions Opens with Trinidad, Mizuki and More
Best wishes to the survivors of the Los Angeles wildfires that took place last week and are still ongoing in small locales.
Most of the heavy damage took place in the western part of L.A. near the ocean due to Santa Ana winds. Another very hot spot was in Altadena just north of the Rose Bowl. It was a horrific tragedy.
Hopefully the worst is over.
Pro boxing returns with 360 Boxing Promotions spotlighting East L.A.’s Omar Trinidad (17-0-1, 13 KOs) defending a regional featherweight title against Mike Plania (31-4, 18 KOs) on Friday, Jan. 17, at the Commerce Casino in Commerce, Calif.
“I’m the king of L.A. boxing and I’ll be ready to put on a show headlining again in the main event. This is my year, I’m ready to challenge and defeat any of the featherweight world champions,” said Trinidad.
UFC Fight Pass will stream the Hollywood Night fight card that includes a female world championship fight and other intriguing match-ups.
Tom Loeffler heads 360 Promotions and once again comes full force with a hot prospect in Trinidad. If you’re not familiar with Loeffler’s history of success, he introduced America to Oleksandr Usyk, Gennady “GGG” Golovkin and the brothers Wladimir and Vitaly Kltischko.
“We’ve got a wealth of international talent and local favorites to kick off our 2025 in grand style,” said Loeffler.
He knows talent.
Trinidad hails from the Boyle Heights area of East L.A. near the Los Angeles riverbed. Several fighters from the past came from that exact area including the first Golden Boy, Art Aragon.
Aragon was a huge gate attraction during the late 1940s until 1960. He was known as a lady’s man and dated several Hollywood starlets in his time. Though he never won a world title he did fight world champions Carmen Basilio, Jimmy Carter and Lauro Salas. He was more or less the king of the Olympic Auditorium and Los Angeles boxing during his career.
Other famous boxers from the Boyle Heights area were notorious gangster Mickey Cohen and former world champion Joey Olivo.
Can Trinidad reach world title status?
Facing Trinidad will be Filipino fighter Plania who’s knocked off a couple of prospects during his career including Joshua “Don’t Blink” Greer and Giovanni Gutierrez. The fighter from General Santos in the Philippines can crack and hold his own in the boxing ring.
It’s a very strong fight card and includes WBO world titlist Mizuki Hiruta of Japan who defends the super flyweight title against Mexican veteran Maribel Ramirez. It’s a tough matchup for Hiruta who makes her American debut. You can’t miss her with that pink hair and she has all the physical tools to make a splash in this country.
Two other female bouts are also planned, including light flyweight banger L.A.’s Gloria Munguilla (6-1) against Coachella’s Brook Sibrian (5-1) in a match set for six rounds. Both are talented fighters. Another female fight includes super featherweights Iyana “Right Hook Roxy” Verduzco (2-0) versus Lindsey Ellis (2-1) in another six-rounder. Ellis can crack with all her wins coming via knockout. Verduzco is a multi-national titlist as an amateur.
Others scheduled to perform are Ali Akhmedov, Joshua Anton, Adan Palma and more.
Doors open at 4:30 p.m.
Boxing and the Media
The sport of professional boxing is currently in flux. It’s always in flux but no matter what people may say or write, boxing will survive.
Whether you like Jake Paul or not, he proved boxing has worldwide appeal with monstrous success in his last show. He has media companies looking at the numbers and imagining what they can do with the sport.
Sure, UFC is negotiating a massive billion dollar deal with media companies, as is WWE, both are very similar in that they provide combat entertainment. You don’t need to know the champions because they really don’t matter. Its about the attractions.
Boxing is different. The good champions last and build a following that endures even beyond their careers a la Mike Tyson.
MMA can’t provide that longevity, but it does provide entertainment.
Currently, there is talk of establishing a boxing league again. It’s been done over and over but we shall see if it sticks this time.
Pro boxing is the true warrior’s path and that means a solo adventure. It’s a one-on-one sport and that appeals to people everywhere. It’s the oldest sport that can be traced to prehistoric times. You don’t need classes in Brazilian Jiujitsu, judo, kick boxing or wrestling. Just show up in a boxing gym and they can put you to work.
It’s a poor person’s path that can lead to better things and most importantly discipline.
Photos credit: Lina Baker
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Boxing Trainer Bob Santos Paid his Dues and is Reaping the Rewards
Bob Santos, the 2022 Sports Illustrated and The Ring magazine Trainer of the Year, is a busy fellow. On Feb. 1, fighters under his tutelage will open and close the show on the four-bout main portion of the Prime Video PPV event at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Jeison Rosario continues his comeback in the lid-lifter, opposing Jesus Ramos. In the finale, former Cuban amateur standout David Morrell will attempt to saddle David Benavidez with his first defeat. Both combatants in the main event have been chasing 168-pound kingpin Canelo Alvarez, but this bout will be contested for a piece of the light heavyweight title.
When the show is over, Santos will barely have time to exhale. Before the month is over, one will likely find him working the corner of Dainier Pero, Brian Mendoza, Elijah Garcia, and perhaps others.
Benavidez (29-0, 24 KOs) turned 28 last month. He is in the prime of his career. However, a lot of folk rate Morrell (11-0, 9 KOs) a very live dog. At last look, Benavidez was a consensus 7/4 (minus-175) favorite, a price that betokens a very competitive fight.
Bob Santos, needless to say, is confident that his guy can upset the odds. “I have worked with both,” he says. “It’s a tough fight for David Morrell, but he has more ways to victory because he’s less one-dimensional. He can go forward or fight going back and his foot speed is superior.”
Benavidez’s big edge, in the eyes of many, is his greater experience. He captured the vacant WBC 168-pound title at age 20, becoming the youngest super middleweight champion in history. As a pro, Benavidez has answered the bell for 148 rounds compared with only 54 for Morrell, but Bob Santos thinks this angle is largely irrelevant.
“Sure, I’d rather have pro experience than amateur experience,” he says, “but if you look at Benavidez’s record, he fought a lot of soft opponents when he was climbing the ladder.”
True. Benavidez, who turned pro at age 16, had his first seven fights in Mexico against a motley assortment of opponents. His first bout on U.S. soil occurred in his native Pheonix against an opponent with a 1-6-2 record.
While it’s certainly true that Morrell, 26, has yet to fight an opponent the caliber of Caleb Plant, he took up boxing at roughly the same tender age as Benavidez and earned his spurs in the vaunted Cuban amateur system, eventually defeating elite amateurs in international tournaments.
“If you look at his [pro] record, you will notice that [Morrell] has hardly lost a round,” says Santos of the fighter who captured an interim title in only his third professional bout with a 12-round decision over Guyanese veteran Lennox Allen.
Bob Santos is something of a late bloomer. He was around boxing for a long time, assisting such notables as Joe Goossen, Emanuel Steward, and Ronnie Shields before becoming recognized as one of the sport’s top trainers.
A native of San Jose, he grew up in a Hispanic neighborhood but not in a household where Spanish was spoken. “I know enough now to get by,” he says modestly. He attended James Lick High School whose most famous alumnus is Heisman winning and Super Bowl winning quarterback Jim Plunkett. “We worked in the same apricot orchard when we were kids,” says Santos. “Not at the same time, but in the same field.”
After graduation, he followed his father’s footsteps into construction work, but boxing was always beckoning. A cousin, the late Luis Molina, represented the U.S. as a lightweight in the 1956 Melbourne Summer Olympics, and was good enough as a pro to appear in a main event at Madison Square Garden where he lost a narrow decision to the notorious Puerto Rican hothead Frankie Narvaez, a future world title challenger.
Santos’ cousin was a big draw in San Jose in an era when the San Jose / Sacramento territory was the bailiwick of Don Chargin. “Don was a beautiful man and his wife Lorraine was even nicer,” says Santos of the husband/wife promotion team who are enshrined in the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Don Chargin was inducted in 2001 and Lorraine posthumously in 2018.
Chargin promoted Fresno-based featherweight Hector Lizarraga who captured the IBF title in 1997. Lizarraga turned his career around after a 5-7-3 start when he hooked up with San Jose gym operator Miguel Jara. It was one of the most successful reclamation projects in boxing history and Bob Santos played a part in it.
Bob hopes to accomplish the same turnaround with Jeison Rosario whose career was on the skids when Santos got involved. In his most recent start, Rosario held heavily favored Jarrett Hurd to a draw in a battle between former IBF 154-pound champions on a ProBox card in Florida.
“I consider that one of my greatest achievements,” says Santos, noting that Rosario was stopped four times and effectively out of action for two years before resuming his career and is now on the cusp of earning another title shot.
The boxer with whom Santos is most closely identified is former four-division world title-holder Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero. The slick southpaw, the pride of Gilroy, California, the self-proclaimed “Garlic Capital of the World,” retired following a bad loss to Omar Figueroa Jr, but had second thoughts and is currently riding a six-fight winning streak. “I’ve known him since he was 15 years old,” notes Santos.
Years from now, Santos may be more closely identified with the Pero brothers, Dainier and Lenier, who aspire to be the Cuban-American version of the Klitschko brothers.
Santos describes Dainier, one of the youngest members of Cuba’s Olympic Team in Tokyo, as a bigger version of Oleksandr Usyk. That may be stretching it, but Dainier (10-0, 8 KOs as a pro), certainly hits harder.
This reporter was a fly on the wall as Santos put Dainier Pero through his paces on Tuesday (Jan. 14) at Bones Adams gym in Las Vegas. Santos held tight to a punch shield, in the boxing vernacular a donut, as the Cuban practiced his punches. On several occasions the trainer was knocked off-balance and the expression on his face as his body absorbed some of the after-shocks, plainly said, “My goodness, what the hell am I doing here? There has to be an easier way to make a living.” It was an assignment that Santos would have undoubtedly preferred handing off to his young assistant, his son Joe Santos, but Joe was preoccupied coordinating David Morrell’s camp.
Dainer’s brother Lenier is also an ex-Olympian, and like Dainier was a super heavyweight by trade as an amateur. With an 11-0 (8 KOs) record, Lenier Pero’s pro career was on a parallel path until stalled by a managerial dispute. Lenier last fought in March of last year and Santos says he will soon join his brother in Las Vegas.
There’s little to choose between the Pero brothers, but Dainier is considered to have the bigger upside because at age 25 he is the younger sibling by seven years.
Bob Santos was in the running again this year for The Ring magazine’s Trainer of the Year, one of six nominees for the honor that was bestowed upon his good friend Robert Garcia. Considering the way that Santos’ career is going, it’s a safe bet that he will be showered with many more accolades in the years to come.
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