Athletes and Guns: STUCK ON STUPID

Published

12 years ago

April 1, 2013

After his final bid for a berth on the American boxing team that would compete in the 2012 London Olympics had ended with an upset, double-tiebreaker computer loss to Terrell Gausha in the U.S. National Championships, Jesse Hart angrily suggested he just might quit the sport altogether.

Asked if his talented son might actually walk away from the ring forever because of the bitter disappointment he had just experienced, Hart’s father, former middleweight contender Eugene “Cyclone” Hart, shrugged and said, “We ain’t going to stay stuck on stupid.” And Jesse Hart, who definitely is not stupid, did the right thing after he took some time to calm down and think things through. He turned pro, signed with Top Rank and is now 5-0, with four knockout victories, as a promising super middleweight.

When it comes to athletes and guns, however, staying stuck on stupid seems to be a persistent condition that shows little signs of abating. The most recent example – and one of the more egregious – of a world-class athlete who put himself in danger of being shot down, in a legal sense, is Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero (31-1-1, 18 KOs), who is scheduled to challenge WBC welterweight champion and pound-for-pound king Floyd Mayweather Jr. (43-0, 26 KOs) on May 4 at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand. The fight, the first for Mayweather in his multimillion-dollar deal with CBS/Showtime, will be televised via Showtime Pay-Per-View and in theaters nationwide.

But although there appears to be little chance the bout won’t go off as scheduled, less certain is the possible damage done to Guerrero’s career in the long term as the result of his March 28 arrest for attempting to bring a handgun onto a flight from New York to Las Vegas. Airport security personnel were summoned and Guerrero (seen above in Tom Casino-Showtime photo) was taken into custody at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Guerrero’s next court appearance in New York isn’t scheduled until May 14, 10 days after he and Mayweather duke it out.

Unlike some athletes who treat firearms the way a certain fraternity’s lothario did during his produce-section come-on to Mrs. Wormer – who can forget Otter telling the cougarish wife of the Faber College dean that “Mine’s bigger than yours,” as he brandished his XL-sized cucumber – Guerrero isn’t stupid, particularly self-absorbed or in need of more and bigger toys that go bang. He is a devout Christian and an inspiration to many for his steadfast support of his wife, Casey, during her ordeal with leukemia (the dread disease is in remission after a successful bone-marrow transplant). Oh, yeah, he’s also a very good boxer who was named co-Fighter of the Year for 2012 (with Nonito Donaire) by Thesweetscience.com after impressive points triumphs over Selcuk Aydin and Andre Berto.

But, although his intentions appeared to be pure, Guerrero – or his advisers – should have known that New York has the strictest gun-control laws in the nation and that trying to bring a handgun unlicensed in that state (it is legally licensed in Guerrero’s home state of California) into an airport, even if it was unloaded and in a lock box, was bound to carry potentially severe consequences. In addition to the firearm, Guerrero, who voluntarily told a Delta Airlines official what was in the lock box, was in possession of two empty 15-round ammunition magazines.

“He was trying to do the right thing, the poor guy,” a law enforcement source, who asked not to be identified, told the New York Daily News when asked about Guerrero’s unwise decision. “The cop had to arrest him. He had no choice. Now it’s up to the DA.”

And the district attorney who has jurisdiction in the matter, Queens Borough’s Richard A. Brown, might not be so inclined to dismiss the incident simply because it involves a squeaky-clean celebrity who believed he wasn’t doing anything wrong. Ignorance of the law is seldom a legitimate excuse for breaking one, and that excuse almost never flies (pun intended) when the violation involves a lethal weapon .

“I hope that Mr. Guerrero fights better than he thinks,” Brown said. “For anyone who hasn’t gotten the message, let me be crystal clear: You cannot bring an unlicensed weapon – loaded or unloaded – into this county or this city. And if you do you will be arrested and face felony charges.”

Guerrero is charged with one count of criminal possession of a firearm and three counts of third-degree possession of a weapon. If convicted, he faces up to four years in prison, although some form of probation and a stern admonishment from a judge seems a more likely outcome.

There always will be debate among lawmakers and the pubic involving the rights of gun-owners as accorded by the Second Amendment to the Constitution, and it says here that those rights are inviolable and should not be abridged without a compelling reason. But there is a time and a place for everything, and there are common-sense solutions to matters that too often result in inflamed emotions. Guns and airports simply do not go together. Can we all agree on that?

I am not some anti-gun zealot. I served in the Marine Corps and can generally hit what I aim at. My late father was a cop, as are both my sons and their wives. They left or do leave for work each day armed with service weapons and in the knowledge that bad stuff can and does happen out on the street.

Some of that bad stuff involves highly paid boxers and ballplayers who often feel they can’t step out the door unless they have more concealed firepower than Dirty Harry. But feeling a need to carry a gun, in places where it isn’t really necessary to do so and highly improper in any case, isn’t restricted to athletes pulling down big bucks. College kids do it, too, and more often that you might imagine.

When I worked down South a lot of years ago, there was, somewhat ironically, a 5-9 shooting guard at Mississippi State University named Kent Looney. One day, during a pickup game on campus, he got into it with a teammate, left the court and returned with pistol in hand, to show that he was not someone to be messed with. Looney played for three colleges in all, displaying a nice perimeter jump shot and, at times, a hair-trigger temper.

A former colleague of mine asked Looney about the gun incident and he replied, “If you travel in the circles I do, you better be packing.” This from a guy who grew up on the famously mean streets of Guntersville, Ala.

Looney now heads the Guntersville Parks and Recreation Department, and last July he coached the Alabama Southern Starz girls to the AAU 11^th-grade Division 2 national championship. He would prefer that his youthful indiscretions not be brought up, but maybe the turnaround in his life can serve as a cautionary tale. Where would he be now had that gun gone off, accidentally or on purpose, and left the teammate lying in a pool of blood?

But there is a sense of entitlement with some athletes who equate guns with virility and strength. NFL wide receiver Plaxico Burress brought a handgun with him to a New York night club a few years ago and inadvertently wound up shooting himself in the leg. Not only that, but he served two years in prison for even having the thing on his person.

Former NBA guard Delonte West was pulled over for a routine traffic stop in 2009 and was found to have two handguns (one a .357 Magnum) and a shotgun in his car. He claims he “needed” the arsenal for self-defense, but he still is looking at a possible three years behind bars. But even West was topped by NFL defensive tackle Tank Johnson, who was found to be in possession of a handgun while leaving a club in Chicago. Thirteen months later, he was arrested for possession of six guns, including two assault rifles, all loaded, in violation of his probation. Another huge defensive tackle, Shaun Rogers, has a legal carry permit for a concealed weapon yet was arrested for bringing a loaded gun into an airport.

No one is saying Robert Guerrero, with a chance to make history by becoming the first man to put a smudge on the pristine record of Mayweather, the self-proclaimed greatest fighter of all time, is an offender on a par with some of the aforementioned. But consider why Guerrero, who is training for the Mayweather fight in Vegas, was on the East Coast to begin with. He was doing a media tour to hype both the fight and himself, and there were no gossip-page reports of him being seen in the wee hours at strip clubs. He appeared on Good Morning America in New York and the 700 Club with Pat Robertson in Norfolk, Va. Neither of those engagements should have concerned him to the point where he felt he needed to be packing heat.

In the weeks ahead, Guerrero – who turned 30 the day before his arrest –will be asked, and frequently, about his strategy for the Mayweather bout. But one question some inquiring minds would like to have answered is why he thought it was a good idea to bring a gun, unloaded or not, onto a commercial airplane when some travelers have been detained in the past for trying to go through the security checkpoint with such seemingly innocuous items as tweezers and metal nail files.

It might not have been a case of getting stuck on stupid, but it was at least a stopover.

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Bernard Fernandez

WBA Feather Champ Nick Ball Chops Down Rugged Ronny Rios in Liverpool

Published

2 hours ago

October 5, 2024

Arne K. Lang

WBA-Feather-Champ-Nick-Ball-Chops-Down-Rugged-Ronny-Rios-in-Liverpool

In his first fight in his native Liverpool since February of 2020, Nick Ball successfully defended his WBA title with a 10^th-round stoppage of SoCal veteran Ronny Rios. The five-foot-two “Wrecking Ball” was making the first defense of a world featherweight strap he won in his second stab at it, taking the belt from Raymond Ford on a split decision after previously fighting Rey Vargas to a draw in a match that many thought Ball had won.

This fight looked like it was going to be over early. Ball strafed Rios with an assortment of punches in the first two rounds, and likely came within a punch or two of ending the match in the third when he put Rios on the canvas with a short left hook and then tore after him relentlessly. But Rios, a glutton for punishment, weathered the storm and actually had some good moments in round four and five.

The brother of welterweight contender Alexis Rocha and a two-time world title challenger at 122 pounds, Rios returned to the ring in April on a ProBox card in Florida and this was his second start after being out of the ring for 28 months. He would be on the canvas twice more before the bout was halted. The punch that knocked him off his pins in round seven wasn’t a clean shot, but he would be in dire straits three rounds later when he was hammered onto the ring apron with a barrage of punches. He managed to maneuver his way back into the ring, but his corner sensibly threw in the towel when it seemed as if referee Bob Williams would let the match continue.

The official time was 2:06 of round ten. Ball improved to 21-0-1 (12 KOs). Rios, 34, declined to 34-5.

Semi-wind-up

A bout contested for a multiplicity of regional 140-pound titles produced a mild upset when Jack Rafferty wore down and eventually stopped Henry Turner whose corner pulled him out after the ninth frame.

Both fighters were undefeated coming in. Turner, now 13-1, was the better boxer and had the best of the early rounds. However, he used up a lot of energy moving side-to-side as he fought off his back foot, and Rafferty, who improved to 24-0 (15 KOs), never wavered as he continued to press forward.

The tide turned dramatically in round eight. One could see Turner’s legs getting loggy and the confidence draining from his face. The ninth round was all Rafferty. Turner was a cooked goose when Rafferty collapsed him with four unanswered body punches, but he made it to the final bell before his corner wisely pulled him out. Through the completed rounds, two of the judges had it even and the third had the vanquished Turner up by 4 points.

Other Bouts of Note

In a lightweight affair, Jadier Herrera, a highly-touted 22-year-old Cuban who had been campaigning in Dubai, advanced to 16-0 (14 KOs) with a third-round stoppage of Oliver Flores (31-6-2) a Nicaraguan southpaw making his UK debut. After two even rounds, Herrera put Flores on the deck with a left to the solar plexus. Flores spit out his mouthpiece as he lay there in obvious distress and referee Steve Gray waived the fight off as he was attempting to rise. The end came 30 seconds into round three.

In a bantamweight contest slated for 10, Liverpool’s Andrew Cain (13-1, 12 KOs) dismissed Colombia’s Lazaro Casseres at the 1:48 mark of the second round.

A stablemate and sparring partner of Nick Ball, Cain knocked Casseres to the canvas in the second round with a short uppercut and forced the stoppage later in the round when he knocked the Colombian into the ropes with a double left hook. Casseres. 27, brought an 11-1 record but had defeated only two opponents with winning records.

In a contest between super welterweights, Walter Fury pitched a 4-round shutout over Dale Arrowsmith. This was the second pro fight for the 27-year-old Fury who had his famous cousin Tyson Fury rooting him on from ringside. Stylistically, Walter resembles Tyson, but his defense is hardly as tight; he was clipped a few times.

Arrowsmith is a weekend warrior and a professional loser, a species indigenous to the British Isles. This was his twenty-fourth fight this year and his 186^th pro fight overall! His record is “illuminated” by nine wins and 10 draws.

A Queensberry Promotion, the Ball vs Rios card aired in the UK on TNT Sports and in the US on ESPN+.

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Alimkhanuly TKOs Mikhailovich and Motu TKOs O’Connell in Sydney

Published

1 day ago

October 4, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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IBF/WBO world middleweight champion Janibek Alimkhanuly, generally regarded as the best of the current crop of middleweights, retained his IBF title today in Sydney, Australia, with a ninth-round stoppage of game but overmatched Andrei Mikhailovich. The end came at the 2:45 mark of round nine.

Favored in the 8/1 range although he was in a hostile environment, Alimkhanuly (16-0, 11 KOs) beat Mikhailovich to a pulp in the second round and knocked him down with one second remaining in the frame, but Mikhailovich survived the onslaught and had several good moments in the ensuing rounds as he pressed the action. However, Alimkhanuly’s punches were cleaner and one could sense that it was only a matter of time before the referee would rescue Mikhailovich from further punishment. When a short left deposited Mikhailovich on the seat of his pants on the lower strand of rope, the ref had seen enough.

Alimkhanuly, a 2016 Olympian for Kazakhstan, was making his first start since October of last year. He and Mikhailovich were slated to fight in Las Vegas in July, but the bout fell apart after the weigh-in when the Kazakh fainted from dehydration.

Owing to a technicality, Alimkhanuly’s WBO belt wasn’t at stake today. Although he has expressed an interest in unifying the title –Eislandy Lara (WBA) and Carlos Adames (WBC) are the other middleweight belt-holders — Alimkhanuly is big for the weight class and it’s a fair assumption that this was his final fight at 160.

The brave Mikhailovich, who was born in Russia but grew up in New Zealand after he and his twin brother were adopted, suffered his first pro loss, declining to 21-1.

Semi-wind-up

Topping the flimsy undercard was a scheduled 8-rounder between Mikhailovich’s stablemate Mea Motu, a 34-year-old Maori, and veteran Australian campaigner Shannon O’Connell, 41. The ladies share eight children between them (Motu, trained by her mother in her amateur days, has five).

A clash of heads in the opening round left O’Connell with a bad gash on her forehead. She had a big lump developing over her right eye when her corner threw in the towel at the 1:06 mark of round four.

Motu (20-0, 8 KOs) was set to challenge IBF/WBO world featherweight champion Ellie Scotney later this month in Manchester, England, underneath Catterall-Prograis, but that match was postponed when Scotney suffered an injury in training. Motu took this fight, which was contested at the catchweight of 125 pounds, to stay busy. O’Connell, 29-8-1, previously had a cup of coffee as a WBA world champion (haven’t we all).

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 299: Golden Boy in Saudi Arabia and More

Published

2 days ago

October 3, 2024

David A. Avila

Avila Perspective, Chap. 299: Golden Boy in Saudi Arabia and More

A small brigade of Mexican and Latino-American fighters gathered at the beautiful Mayan Theater in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday.

Their mission: to export Mexican style fighting to the Saudi Arabia desert.

Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez defends the WBA cruiserweight title against WBO cruiserweight titlist Chris Billam-Smith and they will be joined by several other top Golden Boy Promotion fighters on Nov. 16 at the Venue in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

DAZN will stream the Golden Boy and BOXXER promotions card called “The Venue Riyadh Season.”

Mexican fighters are known worldwide for their ferocity and durability. Ramirez, a former super middleweight champion, surprised many with his convincing win over former champion Arsen Goulamirian last March.

Now Ramirez seeks to unify the cruiserweight titles against United Kingdom’s Smith who has never fought outside of his native country.

“I will become the first Mexican cruiserweight unified champion. It’s exciting because my dream will come true this November 16,” said Ramirez.

Smith has a similar goal.

“This opportunity for me is huge,” said Smith. “I’ve been written off many times before.”

The cruiserweights will be joined by two top super lightweight warriors who’ve been itching to face each other like a pair of fighting roosters.

Arnold Barboza, an undefeated super lightweight contender from Los Angeles, has been chasing top contenders and world champions for the past six years. Former super lightweight champion Jose Ramirez simply wants action and a return to elite status.

“I’ve been wanting this fight since 2019 for whatever reason it never happened,” said Barboza. “I want to give credit and thanks to Oscar, he’s a man of his word. When I signed to Golden Boy, he said he was going to give me this fight.”

“It’s honorable Barboza saying he’s been chasing the fight since 2019. Now that he stands in the way for me to reclaim my titles it’s time to get that fight on,” said Ramirez.

Others on the Riyadh fight card include Puerto Rico’s WBO minimumweight world titlist Oscar Collazo defending against Thailand’s Thammanoon Niyomtrong, along with Oscar Duarte and lightweight contenders William Zepeda and Tevin Farmer.

One fighter missing from the card is Charles Conwell, the super welterweight contender they recently signed earlier in the year. He last performed on the Vergil Ortiz Jr. and Serhii Bohachuk clash in Las Vegas.

Conwell has similar talent to those two.

And what about the women fighters”

Yokasta Valle recently re-signed with Golden Boy Promotions. What is her next scheduled fight? She was spotted facing up against Australia’s Lulu “Bang, Bang” Hawton at a fight card. Is that on the horizon?

West Coast venues

Speaking of the Mayan Theater in downtown Los Angeles, its just a few buildings north of the Belasco Theater where Golden Boy was staging its club shows for several years.

A majority of the boxing media favored that location for its cozy atmosphere and proximity to LA Live. A number of prospects that developed into contenders and world champions fought there including Vergil Ortiz Jr., Ryan Garcia, Joshua Franco, and Oscar Duarte.

On any given fight night celebrities like Mario Lopez, George Lopez and others would show up in the small venue that held several hundred fans in its ornate theater setting.

The Mayan Theater and Belasco Theater are still open for business. According to one source, LA Laker owner Jeannie Buss stages a pro wrestling show at one of those theaters.

World title fight

England’s Nick Ball (20-0-1, 11 KOs) defends the WBA featherweight world title against Southern California’s Ronny Rios (34-4, 17 KOs) on Saturday Oct. 5, at M&S Bank Arena in Liverpool, England. Starting time for the Queensberry and Top Rank promotion card is 11 a.m. PT.

Ball was last seen nearly toppling WBC featherweight titlist Rey Vargas but lost last March. He then defeated Ray Ford for the WBA title

Fights to Watch

Fri. ESPN+ 2 a.m. PT Janibek Alimkhanuly (15-0) vs Andrei Mikhailovich (21-0)

Sat. ESPN+ 11 a.m. PT Nick Ball (20-0-1) vs Ronny Rios (34-4)

Photo credit: Cris Esqueda / Golden Boy

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