He Saw Manny Pacquiao, and Was Hit By The Thunderbolt

Published

12 years ago

December 5, 2012

There is a great scene from the Best Picture of 1972, The Godfather , that reminds me of why boxing fans are so taken with certain fighters. Temporarily exiled American Michael Corleone is walking the hills in Sicily with two bodyguards when he glimpses the lovely Apollonia and is instantly mesmerized. It might be the best example ever captured on celluloid of someone falling in love at first sight.

“I think you got hit by the thunderbolt,” one of the bodyguards tells the smitten Michael.

For boxing buffs, the thunderbolt hits when we first catch sight of someone we hadn’t seen before, and maybe even hadn’t heard anything about, but whose style, charisma or power have the effect on us that Apollonia had on Michael Corleone. We immediately reserve a part of our heart for that fighter, and the likelihood is that he resides there for the remainder of his ring career, and possibly forever.

For some readers of TSS, the object of their affection was a young destroyer named Mike Tyson, who took the world by storm in the mid-1980s. For others, those who cherish toe-to-toe action above all else, the man-crush might have been on Matthew Saad Muhammad or Arturo Gatti, whose high threshold of pain enabled them to go to hell and back so relentlessly that many opponents were unable to remain their traveling companions all the way to the final bell. If your preference is garish outfits and outrageous behavior, you might have fallen hard for Jorge Paez or the late Hector “Macho” Camacho. If you are partial to those blessed with blindingly obvious talent, Muhammad Ali and Roy Jones Jr. might qualify as your faves. Female fans, in particular, had a thing for the matinee-idol looks of Oscar De La Hoya.

The purpose of this particular missive is to tell the story of two such instances of someone falling under a fighter’s sway, with little or no advance warning, and to ask TSS readers for their own recollections of similar Michael-sees-Apollonia moments. What makes us tumble head over heels for a particular fighter? Is there a rhyme or reason for it, some feasible explanation that provides the sort of data a researcher could quantify? Or is it simply luck of the draw, a product of our own natural leanings toward someone who fits our mental image of what a boxing hero should be?

One caveat: Excluded are fighters who already were well-known to the world at large at the time a given fan joined his crowd of worshipers. If you didn’t fully commit yourself to Ali until, say, his first fight with Joe Frazier, or the other way around, that doesn’t count. Those guys were already international icons, which prohibits them for purposes of this discussion from being accorded the out-of-the-blue qualities of an Apollonia when she wandered into Michael Corleone’s sight line.

For retired Associated Press boxing writer Ed Schuyler Jr., the thunderbolt came in the form of a dark-haired Panamanian force of nature named Roberto Duran. For me, it was also a dark-haired destroyer of whom I had little or no advance knowledge, except that he was a southpaw and from the Philippines. His name: Manny Pacquiao.

Much has happened since the first time I laid eyes upon Pacquiao, in what was his first bout in the United States. “Pac Man” eventually became a global superstar, as did Duran, which certified that my highly favorable first impression of him, as was the case for Fast Eddie with Duran, was entirely justified. But 11-plus years have gone by; Pacquiao is 33, with some telltale signs of slippage that an objective reporter, which I consider myself to be, cannot overlook. If Pacquiao were to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. on Saturday, instead of taking on Juan Manuel Marquez for the fourth time, my pick to win would be Mayweather. I’m not even sure Pacquiao can extend his record against Marquez to 3-0-1; all three previous bouts in their series were highly competitive, and if you’re among those who believe that JMM deserved the nod in each of the other scraps, I won’t say you have no basis for forming that opinion.

But who knows? If Apollonia hadn’t been blown up by that car bomb, and she and Michael had stayed married, maybe they would have started arguing and wound up being divorced. Perhaps Michael, upon his return to America, would have rethought his romantic situation and started canoodling with his previous flame, Kay. The thunderbolt that hits you at the start of something isn’t always guaranteed to electrify you for all time.

Still, there’s something about that giddy rush a boxing buff feels when he yields to the appeal of a hot new attraction. So travel, if you will, down the path that Schuyler took when Duran knocked hkm for a loop, as Apollonia did to Michael, or the young Manny did to me. It is, after all, the reason we watch fights and fighters.

Schuyler, 77, an inductee into the International Boxing Hall of Fame who retired in April 2002 after nearly 32 years on the AP fight beat, recalled his first glimpse of Duran in a conversation we had several years ago.

“We went up to Grossinger’s in the Catskills to watch Ken Buchanan train,” Schuyler said. “Buchanan wasn’t in the gym yet, but in the ring was this dusky, dark-haired guy, Roberto Duran. He was so … so … I don’t know, like an animal. A panther. I just had this sense that this kid (Duran was 20 at the time) was born to fight.”

That feeling of impending destiny intensified the night of Sept. 13, 1971, when Duran – whose 24 previous professional bouts (all victories) had occurred in his native Panama or Mexico – took on a rugged journeyman, Benny Huertas, on the undercard of a show headlined by Buchanan’s defense of his WBA lightweight championship against another Panamanian, Ismael Laguna, in Madison Square Garden. Duran obliterated Huertas as if he were a flimsy shack on the beach in the face of a Category 5 hurricane’s landfall.

“Duran blew through Huertas in less than a round, and Benny could fight,” Schuyler said. “I remember thinking, `We’re going to have to watch this guy.’”

Manos de Piedra retuned to Panama for three more winning bouts before making his next trip to the U.S., in which he scored an emphatic, 13^th-round stoppage of Buchanan on June 26, 1972, in Madison Square Garden, lifting the Scotsman’s WBA 135-pound title in the process. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Fast-forward nearly 39 years to the day, to June 23, 2001. Pacquiao was making his first ring appearance in America, after logging 31 bouts in the Philippines, one in Japan and two in Thailand, as a short-notice replacement for the injured Enrique Sanchez against the reigning IBF super bantamweight titlist, Lehlo Ledwaba of South Africa. Pacquiao was such a prohibitive underdog that night in Las Vegas’ MGM Grand – the main event was De La Hoya’s wresting of the WBC super welterweight championship from Javier Castillejo – that the Vegas sports books did not post a line on the fight or accept wagers on its outcome.

I remember the arena, which would fill almost to capacity by the time De La Hoya and Castijllo made their way to the ring, was more than half-empty as Pacquiao began to take target practice on the unfortunate Ledwaba, who must have felt very much as Huertas did when Duran teed off on him. My report in the Philadelphia Daily News indicated that the nearly anonymous Pacquaio had in effect stolen the spotlight from De La Hoya, at least among those who were in the arena when he was abusing the soon-to-be-dethroned South African. My account read that Pacquiao “electrified the crowd” of 12,480 while “flooring Lewaba three times and beating him bloody.”

In the game of what-if, which we all play at times, it easy to imagine prime-on-prime matchups of Duran and Pacquiao at both 135 and 147 pounds, much as is fun to imagine Jack Dempsey vs. Rocky Marciano or Ali vs. Tyson. It is what fight fans do. In fact, it probably is easier imagining Duran vs. Pacquiao at this point than Pacquiao vs. Mayweather, which Pacquiao’s trainer, Freddie Roach, has likened to “chasing a rabbit we can’t catch.”

So what do you say, TSS readers? What fighter or fighters hit you with the thunderbolt, and why?

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Bernard Fernandez

Avila Perspective, Chap. 300: Eastern Horizons — Bivol, Beterbiev and Japan

Published

12 hours ago

October 11, 2024

David A. Avila

Avila Perspective, Chap. 300: Eastern Horizons — Bivol, Beterbiev and Japan

All eyes are pointed east, if you are a boxing fan.

First, light heavyweights Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol meet in Saudi Arabia to determine who is the baddest at 175 pounds. Then a few days later bantamweights and flyweights tangle in Japan.

Before the 21^st century, who would have thought we could watch fights from the Middle East and Asia live.

Who would have thought Americans would care.

Streaming has changed the boxing landscape.

Beterbiev (20-0, 20 KOs), the IBF, WBC, WBO light heavyweight titlist meets WBA titlist Bivol (23-0, 12 KOs) for the undisputed world championship on Saturday Oct. 12, at the Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The entire card will air on DAZN pay-per-view. In the United States, the main event, expected to start at 3:15 pm PT, will also be available on ESPN+.

A few decades ago, only Europeans and Asians would care about this fight card. And only the most avid American fight fan would even notice. Times have changed dramatically for the worldwide boxing scene.

In the 1970s and 80s, ABC’s Wide World of Sports would occasionally televise boxing from other countries. Muhammad Ali was featured on that show many times. Also, Danny “Lil Red” Lopez, Salvador Sanchez and Larry Holmes.

Howard Cosell was usually the host of that show and then denounced the sport as too brutal after 15 rounds of a one-sided match between Holmes and Randall Cobb at the Astrodome in Houston, Texas in 1982.

That same Cobb would later go into acting and appear in films with Chuck Norris and others.

Streaming apps have brought international boxing to the forefront.

Until this century heavyweights and light heavyweight champions were dominated by American prizefighters. Not anymore.

Beterbiev, a Russian-born fighter now living in Canada, is 39 years old and has yet to hear the final bell ring in any of his pro fights. He sends all his opponents away hearing little birdies. He is a bruiser.

“I want a good fight. I’m preparing for a good fight. We’ll see,” said Beterbiev.

Bivol, 33, is originally from Kyrgyzstan and now lives in the desert town of Indio, Calif. He has never tasted defeat but unlike his foe, he vanquishes his opponents with a more technical approach. He does have some pop.

“Artur (Beterbiev) is a great champion. He has what I want. He has the belts. And it’s not only about belts. When I look at his skills, I want to check my skills also against this amazing fighter,” said Bivol.

The Riyadh fight card also features several other world titlists including Jai Opetaia, Chris Eubank Jr and female star Skye Nicolson.

Japan

Two days later, bantamweight slugger Junto Nakatani leads a fight card that includes flyweight and super flyweight world titlists.

Nakatani (28-0, 21 KOs), a three-division world titlist, defends the WBC bantamweight title against Thailand’s Tasana Salapat (76-1, 53 KOs) on Monday Oct. 14, at Ariake Arena in Tokyo. ESPN+ will stream the Teiken Promotions card.

The left-handed assassin Nakatani has a misleading appearance that might lead one to think he’s more suited for a tailor than a scrambler of brain cells.

A few years back I ran into Nakatani at the Maywood Boxing club in the Los Angeles area. I thought he was a journalist, not the feared pugilist who knocked out Angel Acosta and Andrew Moloney on American shores.

Nakatani is worth watching at 1 a.m. on ESPN+.

Others on the card include WBO super flyweight titlist Kosei Tanaka (20-1, 11 KOs) defending against Phumelele Cafu (10-0-3); and WBO fly titlist Anthony Olascuaga (7-1, 5 KOs) defending against Jonathan “Bomba” Gonzalez (28-3-1, 14 KOs) the WBO light fly titlist who is moving up in weight.

It’s a loaded fight card.

RIP Max Garcia

The boxing world lost Max Garcia one of Northern California’s best trainers and a longtime friend of mine. He passed away this week.

Garcia and his son Sam Garcia often traveled down to Southern California with their fighters ready to show off their advanced boxing skills time after time.

It was either the late 90s or early 2000s that I met Max in Big Bear Lake at one of the many boxing gyms there at that time. We would run into each other at fight cards in California or Nevada. He was always one of the classiest guys in the boxing business.

If Max had a fighter on a boxing card you knew it was trouble for the other guy. All of his fighters were prepared and had that extra something. He was one of the trainers in NorCal who started churning out elite fighters out of Salinas, Gilroy and other nearby places.

Recently, I spotted Max and his son on a televised card with another one of his fighters. I mentioned to my wife to watch the Northern California fighter because he was with the Garcias. Sure enough, he battered the other fighter and won handily.

Max, you will be missed by all.

Fights to Watch

(all times Pacific Time)

Sat. DAZN pay-per-view, 9 a.m. Beterbiev-Bivol full card. Beterbiev (20-0) vs Dmitry Bivol (23-0) main event only also available on ESPN+ (3:15 pm approx.)

Mon. ESPN+ 1 a.m. Junto Nakatani (28-0) vs Tasana Salapat (76-1).

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

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Junto Nakatani’s Road to a Mega-fight plus Notes on the Best Boxers from Thailand

Published

2 days ago

October 10, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Junto Nakatani’s Road to a Mega-fight plus Notes on the Best Boxers from Thailand

WBC bantamweight champion Junto Nakatani, whose name now appears on several of the Top 10 pound-for-pound lists, returns to the ring on Monday. His title defense against Thailand’s Petch CP Freshmart is the grand finale of a two-day boxing festival at Tokyo’s Ariake Arena.

One of several Thai boxers sponsored by Fresh Mart, a national grocery chain, Petch, 30, was born Tasana Salapat or Thasana Saraphath, depending on the source, and is sometimes identified as Petch Sor Chitpattana (confusing, huh?). A pro since 2011, he brings a record of 76-1 with 53 TKOs.

In boxing, records are often misleading and that is especially true when referencing boxers from Thailand. And so, although Petch has record that jumps off the page, we really don’t know how good he is. Is he world class, or is he run-of-the-mill?

A closer look at his record reveals that only 20 of his wins came against opponents with winning records. Fifteen of his victims were making their pro debut. It is revealing that his lone defeat came in his lone fight outside Thailand. In December of 2018, he fought Takuma Inoue in Tokyo and lost a unanimous decision. Inoue, who was appearing in his thirteenth pro fight, won the 12-rounder by scores of 117-111 across the board.

A boxer doesn’t win 76 fights in a career in which he answers the bell for 407 rounds without being able to fight more than a little, but there’s a reason why the house fighter Nakatani (28-0, 21 KOs) is favored by odds as high as 50/1 in the bookmaking universe. Petch may force Junto to go the distance, but even that is a longshot.

Boxers from Thailand

Four fighters from Thailand, all of whom were active in the 1990s, are listed on the 42-name Hall of Fame ballot that arrived in the mail this week. They are Sot Chitalada, Ratanopol Sor Varapin, Veeraphol Sahaprom, and Pongsaklek Wonjongham. On a year when the great Manny Pacquiao is on the ballot, leaving one less slot for the remainder, the likelihood that any of the four will turn up on the dais in Canastota at the 2025 induction ceremony is slim.

By our reckoning, two active Thai fighters have a strong chance of making it someday. The first is Srisaket Sor Rungvisai who knocked Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez from his perch at the top of the pound-for-pound rankings in one of the biggest upsets in recent memory and then destroyed him in the rematch. The noted boxing historian Matt McGrain named Sor Rungvisai (aka Wisaksil Wangek) the top super flyweight of the decade 2010-2019.

The other is Knockout CP Freshmart (aka Thammanoon Niyomstrom). True, he’s getting a bit long in the tooth for a fighter in boxing’s smallest weight class (he’s 34), but the long-reigning strawweight champion, who has never fought a match scheduled for fewer than 10 rounds, has won all 25 of his pro fights and shows no signs of slowing down. He will be back in action next month opposing Puerto Rico-born Oscar Collazo in Riyadh.

The next Thai fighter to go into the IBHOF (and it may not happen in my lifetime) will bring the number to three. Khaosai Galaxy entered the Hall with the class of 1999 and Pone Kingpetch was inducted posthumously in 2023 in the Old Timer’s category.

Nakatani (pictured)

Hailing from the southeastern Japanese city of Inabe, Junto Nakatani is the real deal. In 2023, the five-foot-eight southpaw forged the TSS Knockout of the Year at the expense of Andrew Moloney. Late in the 12^th round, he landed a short left hook to the chin and the poor Aussie was unconscious before he hit the mat. In his last outing, on July 20, he went downstairs to dismiss his opponent, taking out Vincent Astrolabio with a short left to the pit of the stomach. Astrolabio went down, writhing in pain, and was unable to continue. It was all over at the 2:37 mark of the opening round.

It’s easy to see where Nakatani is headed after he takes care of business on Monday.

Currently, Japanese boxers own all four meaningful pieces of the 118-pound puzzle. Of the four, the most recognizable name other than Nakatani is that of Takuma Inoue who will be making the third defense of his WBA strap on Sunday, roughly 24 hours before Nakatani touches gloves with Petch in the very same ring. Inoue is a consensus 7/2 favorite over countryman Seiga Tsatsumi.

A unification fight between Nakatani and Takuma Inoue (20-1, 5 KOs) would be a natural. But this match, should it transpire, would be in the nature of an appetizer. A division above sits Takuma’s older brother Naoya Inoue who owns all four belts in the 122-pound weight class but, of greater relevance, is widely regarded the top pound-for-pound fighter in the world.

A match between Junto Nakatani and the baby-faced “Monster” would be a delicious pairing and the powers-that-be want it to happen.

In boxing, the best-laid plans often go awry, but there’s a good possibility that we will see Nakatani vs. Naoya Inoue in 2025. If so, that would be the grandest domestic showdown in Japanese boxing history.

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Bygone Days: Muhammad Ali at the Piano in the Lounge at the Tropicana

Published

4 days ago

October 7, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Bygone Days: Muhammad Ali at the Piano in the Lounge at the Tropicana

Among other things, Las Vegas in “olden days” was noted for its lounge shows. Circa 1970, for the price of two drinks, one could have caught the Ike and Tina Turner Review at the International. They performed three shows nightly, the last at 3:15 am, and they blew the doors off the joint.

The weirdest “lounge show” in Las Vegas wasn’t a late-night offering, but an impromptu duet performed in the mid-afternoon for a select standing-room audience in the lounge at the Tropicana. Sharing the piano in the Blue Room in a concert that could not have lasted much more than a minute were Muhammad Ali and world light heavyweight champion Bob Foster. The date was June 25, 1972, a Sunday.

What brought about this odd collaboration was a weigh-in, not the official weigh-in, which would happen the next day, but a dress rehearsal conducted for the benefit of news reporters and photographers and a few invited guests such as the actor Jack Palance who would serve as the color commentator alongside the legendary Mel Allen on the closed-circuit telecast. On June 27, Ali and Foster would appear in separate bouts at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Ali was pit against Jerry Quarry in a rematch of their 1970 tilt in Atlanta; Foster would be defending his title against Jerry’s younger brother, Mike Quarry.

In those days, whenever Las Vegas hosted a prizefight that was a major news story, it was customary for the contestants to arrive in town about three weeks before their fight. They held public workouts, perhaps for a nominal fee, at the hotel-casino where they were lodged.

Muhammad Ali and Bob Foster were sequestered and trained at Caesars Palace. The Quarry brothers were domiciled a few blocks away at the Tropicana.

The Trop, as the locals called it, was the last major hotel-casino on the south end of the Strip, a stretch of road, officially Highway 91, the ran for 2.2 miles. When the resort opened in 1957, it had three hundred rooms. Like similar properties along the famous Strip, it would eventually go vertical, maturing into a high-rise.

In 1959, entertainment director Lou Walters (father of Barbara) imported a lavish musical revue from Paris, the Folies Bergere. The extravaganza with its topless showgirls became embedded in the Las Vegas mystique. The show, which gave the Tropicana its identity, ran for almost 50 full years, becoming the longest-running show in Las Vegas history.

—

Although the Quarry brothers were on the premises, Ali and Foster arrived at the Blue Room first. After Dr. Donald Romeo performed his perfunctory examinations, there was nothing to do but stand around and wait for the brothers to show up. It was then that Foster spied a grand piano in the corner of the room.

Taking a seat at the bench, he tinkled the keys, producing something soft and bluesy. “Move over man,” said Ali, not the sort of person to be upstaged at anything. Taking a seat alongside Foster at the piano, he banged out something that struck the untrained ear of veteran New York scribe Dick Young as boogie-woogie.

When the Quarry brothers arrived, Ali went through his usual antics, shouting epithets at Jerry Quarry as Jerry was having his blood pressure taken. “These make the best fights, when you get some white hopes and some spooks,…er, I mean some colored folks,” Young quoted Ali as saying.

This comment was greeted with a big laugh, but Jerry Quarry, renowned for his fearsome left hook, delivered a better line after Ali had stormed out. Surveying the room, he noticed several attractive young ladies, dressed provocatively. “I can see I ain’t the only hooker in here,” he said.

—

The doubleheader needed good advance pub because both bouts were considered mismatches. In the first Ali-Quarry fight, Quarry suffered a terrible gash above his left eye before his corner pulled him out after three rounds. Ali was a 5/1 favorite in the rematch. Bob Foster, who would be making his tenth title defense, was an 8/1 favorite over Mike Quarry who was undefeated (35-0) but had been brought along very carefully and was still only 21 years old. (In his syndicated newspaper column, oddsmaker Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder said the odds were 200/1 against both fights going the distance, but there wasn’t a bookie in the country that would take that bet.)

The Fights

There were no surprises. It was a sad night for the Quarry clan at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Muhammad Ali, clowning in the early rounds, took charge in the fifth and Jerry Quarry was in bad shape when the referee waived it off 19 seconds into the seventh round. In the semi-wind-up, Bob Foster retained his title in a more brutal fashion. He knocked the younger Quarry brother into dreamland with a thunderous left hook just as the fourth round was about to end. Mike Quarry lay on the canvas for a good three minutes before his handlers were able to revive him.

—

In the ensuing years, the Tropicana was far less invested in boxing than many of its rivals on the Strip, but there was a wisp of activity in the mid-1980s. A noteworthy card, on June 30, 1985, saw Jimmy Paul successfully defend his world lightweight title with a 14^th-round stoppage of Robin Blake. Freddie Roach, a featherweight with a big local following and former U.S. Olympic gold medalist Henry Tillman appeared on the undercard. The lead promoter of this show, which aired on a Sunday afternoon on CBS (with Southern Nevada blacked out) was the indefatigable Bob Arum who seemingly has no intention of leaving this mortal coil until he has out-lived every Las Vegas casino-resort born in the twentieth century.

—

I may drive past the Tropicana in the next few hours and give it a last look, mindful that Muhammad Ali once frolicked here, however briefly. But I won’t be there for the implosion.

On Wednesday morning, Oct. 9, shortly after 2 a.m., the Tropicana, shuttered since April, will be reduced to rubble. On its grounds will rise a stadium for the soon-to-be-former Oakland A’s baseball team.

A recognized authority on the history of prizefighting and the history of American sports gambling, TSS editor-in-chief Arne K. Lang is the author of five books including “Prizefighting: An American History,” released by McFarland in 2008 and re-released in a paperback edition in 2020.

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