Martinez Can Go Home Again, But Maybe Not To Stay

Published

12 years ago

April 24, 2013

All he knew was that the years flow by like water, and that one day men come home again.

—-Thomas Wolfe, “You Can’t Go Home Again”

Wolfe, the early 20^th century American novelist, was just 37 when he died on Sept. 15, 1938, but his most-quoted work – published posthumously in 1940 – captures the essence of WBC middleweight champion Sergio “Maravilla” Martinez, who at once is irresistibly drawn to the country of his birth while at the same time reluctant to revisit old times and more than a few unpleasant memories. Men do tend to come home again, but often with as much apprehension as anticipation.

To the 45,000 or so Martinez-worshipping boxing fans who will jam into an outdoor soccer stadium in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on April 27 to witness their pugilistic hero’s first ring appearance in his homeland in 11 years – his opponent in the HBO-televised bout will be Englishman Martin Murray – Martinez’s internal conflict is of little consequence. Argentina has a proud history of producing excellent boxers (Carlos Monzon, Pascual Perez, Hugo Corro, Niccolino Loche, et al) and Martinez (50-2-2, 28 KOs) no doubt will enhance his status as one of its all-time greats should he handle Murray (25-0-1, 11 KOs) as he has his recent opponents.

How big is the 38-year-old Martinez (seen above, in Chris Farina-Top Rank photo, exulting after finishing fight vs. Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. last year) in the South American country of over 41 million residents? He was named Argentina’s most popular sports personality of 2012, edging out soccer superstar Lionel Messi. That’s fairly amazing, considering that soccer is Argentina’s foremost sporting obsession, as well as the fact that Martinez has spent more than a decade living abroad, in such jewels of European culture as Rome and Madrid, as well as Oxnard, Calif., although he has since relocated back to Spain.

“I don’t want to go back to where I came from,” he has said of his impoverished childhood and adolescence in Quilmes, Argentina, in Buenos Aires Province, which he has described as a “dirt-poor rural village.”

A naturally gifted athlete who was, at various times, a professional soccer player, professional cyclist and competitive tennis player, Martinez, a southpaw, didn’t even try his hand at boxing until the advanced age of 20. He compiled a 39-2 amateur record before turning pro, at 22, with a second-round disqualification victory over Cristian Marcelo Vivas. He was 16-0-1, all his bouts in Argentina, before his first scrap elsewhere, and his first in the United States, on Feb. 19, 2000, at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. But that fight – part of the undercard of a show headlined by the first of three classic matchups of Marco Antonio Barrera and Erik Morales – ended badly for Martinez, who was stopped in seven rounds by Antonio Margarito.

A chastened Martinez returned to Argentina, where he won his next seven fights, before taking off to Madrid, where he hooked up with trainer Gabriel Sarmiento. Eleven of his next 14 bouts were in Spain (the other three were in the United Kingdom) before he was “discovered” in 2007 by American promoter Lou DiBella, who wondered how someone with that much talent could have flown beneath boxing’s global radar for so long.

“He’s the best pure athlete I’ve ever promoted,” DiBella gushed after Martinez captured the WBC and WBO 160-pound titles on a 12-round unanimous decision over Kelly Pavlik on April 17, 2010, in Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall. “When I first saw a tape of this guy I thought, `Where has he been? He can fight his rear end off.’

“I was sort of stunned that he was out there and available to me. I couldn’t believe somebody with Sergio’s talent hadn’t been picked up.”

The blood-splattered dethronement of the favored Pavlik – who was badly cut over his left eye and gashed even worse beneath the right one — was a sort of coming-out party for Martinez in America, even though it was his ninth consecutive fight on these shores, and the 10^th overall. Maybe that was because he picked a good night to sparkle, flooring Pavlik with a short right hand in the eighth round, when he was behind on two of the three judges’ scorecards. It was all Martinez the rest of the way as he connected with, according to CompuBox, 34 of 63 power shots in the ninth round and outlanded Pavlik, 112 to 55, in rounds 9-12.

“I couldn’t see out of my right eye after he cut it (in Round 9),” Pavlik said at the postfight press conference. “He found the rhythm and smelled the blood.”

But it wasn’t until his next outing, also in Boardwalk Hall, that Martinez even more emphatically announced himself as one of the finest pound-for-pound fighters on the planet, starching Paul “The Punisher” Williams in the second round with a compact overhand left that more than made up for his disputed, majority-decision loss to Williams 11½ months earlier. The takeout shot packed so much power that Williams pitched forward onto the canvas, face first, not even attempting to break his fall. Referee Earl Morton didn’t bother with initiating the formality of a count.

“That punch would have knocked anyone on earth out,” DiBella said at the time. “I got the best fighter in the world. I ain’t trippin’. I don’t think either one of those guys (Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao) watched this fight and said, `I want to fight Sergio Martinez.’ I guarantee you that didn’t happen.”

Scan most of the top 10 P4P ratings compiled by knowledgable boxing observers and Martinez – the 2010 Fighter of the Year, as recognized by the Boxing Writers Association of America and The Ring –is generally in the third or fourth slot, behind only Mayweather, Andre Ward and, on some lists, Juan Manuel Marquez. He not only is properly acclaimed for his boxing skills and putaway power, but for his indomitable heart and tenacity (witness the way he fought his way out of deep trouble in the 12^th round against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., whom he had dominated over the first 11 rounds).

“His (left) hand was broken, he got knocked down, his (left) knee was messed up, but he got up and he didn’t look to hold,” DiBella told ESPN after Martinez’s tap-dance along the edge of disaster. “He looked to fight. Sergio Martinez is a man’s man. He could have held and grabbed Chavez, or just stayed away, but that is not who he is. He wanted to fight.”

But Martinez’s allure to the public is not restricted to his capabilities inside the ropes. He is a ruggedly handsome man, someone who at various times been described as “a sort of Marlboro man of the Pampas” and “a dark-haired Daniel Craig lookalike.” Craig is the movies’ latest James Bond.

It is not difficult to imagine Martinez on the silver screen as an Old West sheriff or Armani-clad dazzler. He has a cosmopolitan aura that hardly hints at his hardscrabble roots, and his wealth owes as much to prudent investments as to his purses from boxing. Perhaps not since Gene Tunney, the erudite two-time conqueror of Jack Dempsey, has boxing presented such a Renaissance man capable of slipping in and out of the conflicting worlds of elegance and violence.

“He’s an unusual athlete, an unusual fighter,” DiBella said in an interview with the New York Times. “He’s cerebral. Sensitive. Very artsy. Likes fashion. Has his own sense of style, which is extremely Euro. Great recall. He should be in Mensa, the way his mind works.”

All of which begs several questions: Why has Sergio Martinez, evolving worldwide icon but especially beloved in Argentina, only now decided to put himself on live display before the countrymen who so cherish him? Why hasn’t he opted to come home again after so long a self-imposed absence?

As it turns out, that cerebral, sensitive guy who can turn out your lights with a single punch was a child who knows that real robbery is something more terrifying than a couple of boxing judges submitting dubious scorecards. Martinez claims he was so victimized “at least 10 times” in his Argentine barrio while growing up, once by someone brandishing a lethal weapon. Thieves relieved him of, among other things, his watch (twice), shoes, wallet and bicycle. The loss of his fancy racing bike, at 15, prematurely ended his dream of becoming a world-class cyclist. His father, a construction worker, didn’t have the money to replace Sergio’s most prized possession.

“One day his computer school was closed,” Hugo Martinez, Sergio’s dad, said in the Times article. “Someone hit him with a gun in the eye. It was purple, bruised. We joked about his bad luck with robberies. It seemed like, if Sergio left the house, he got robbed.”

Encountering danger while on the street is hardly restricted to poor and disadvantaged citizens of a particular nation. Inner-city kids who have made it to boxing’s elite status understand that even the most glittering urban areas also have dark underbellies. There are always going to be those who have, and those who have not. It’s the have-nots who tend to gravitate toward boxing, where it is literally possible to fight your way to something better.

Aware of boxers who lost much of what they earned with their fists, Martinez is determined to hold onto the better way of life he has made for himself. He also knows that Murray, whose own background is specked with rough patches, will be coming at him with everything he has. Desperation – to get to the top, or to remain there — is the fuel that feeds every fighter’s inner fire.

“It doesn’t get any better for me than having the chance to prove myself against Martinez,” Murray said in the April edition of the UK’s Boxing Monthly. “As soon as we got offered the fight, I said, `Let’s (bleeping) do it.’ I jumped at it. He’s a great fighter, but not by any means unbeatable. I’ve got the style to beat him … I can out-think him and I can outfight him.”

DiBella, a former senior vice president of HBO Sports, has been around long enough to know it doesn’t pay to take anything for granted in the fight game. Murray, he notes, is a tough and legitimate 160-pounder while Martinez, if need be, can still make 154 with no problem. And then there is the self-imposed burden Martinez bears of feeling the need to deliver a spectacular homecoming performance. It is not unreasonable to believe there will be no more such returns.

“Sergio loves Argentina,” DiBella said. “I think he recognizes the problems that existed, the socio-economic issues that he had while growing up in poverty. But his homeland is his homeland, which is why I think this event is so important to him.

“There is going to be pressure on him. You can say it’s a purely happy situation, but walking into a stadium filled with adoring fans after so many years away, and as this huge celebrity, there has to be pressure. He’s a human being. But he’s also a consummate professional. I’m sure he’ll handle it. He has a lot to fight for.”

Murray also has more than mere boxing issues to contend with. Not only is he on Martinez’s turf, but he expects some residual resentment from the massive crowd over the fact he is English and many Argentines remember 1982’s Falklands Conflict, which pitted their country and the UK over a group of islands in the South Atlantic, east of Argentina. After 74 days of fighting, Argentina surrendered and the Falklands remained under British control, but past resentments sometimes die hard.

The 13-year age gap also is part of the storyline. For Martinez – an “overnight star” after battling his way up through the ranks for more than a decade – the challenge is to hold onto his hard-earned fame before his window of opportunity closes.

“He’s a young 38,” DiBella pointed out. “He’s certainly not old at 38. But I don’t think he’s a guy who’s going to keep going into his 40s. You’re probably looking at the last couple of active years of an exceptionally great athlete.”

So what might lie ahead in the stretch run?

“We’re not looking past Murray, but there are big fights out there for Sergio,” DiBella said. “Maybe the winner of (Matthew) Macklin and (Gennady) Golovkin. Other fighters are developing (as potentially lucrative opponents). And, obviously, the Chavez rematch is something that has to be considered.”

There is not a lot of data to suggest how Thomas Wolfe felt about boxing, or about boxers who leave home and return to high expectations. It will be interesting to see how this intriguing chapter in the big book of human drama unfolds.

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!

Bernard Fernandez

The Challenge of Playing Muhammad Ali

Published

18 mins ago

December 18, 2024

Thomas Hauser

There have been countless dramatizations of Muhammad Ali’s life and more will follow in the years ahead. The most heavily marketed of these so far have been the 1977 movie titled The Greatest starring Ali himself and the 2001 biopic Ali starring Will Smith.

The Greatest was fictionalized. Its saving grace apart from Ali’s presence on screen was the song “The Greatest Love of All” which was written for the film and later popularized by Whitney Houston. Beyond that, the movie was mediocre. “Of all our sports heroes,” Frank Deford wrote, “Ali needs least to be sanitized. But The Greatest is just a big vapid valentine. It took a dive.”

The 2001 film was equally bland but without the saving grace of Ali on camera. “I hated that film,” Spike Lee said. “It wasn’t Ali.” Jerry Izenberg was in accord, complaining, “Will Smith playing Ali was an impersonation, not a performance.”

The latest entry in the Ali registry is a play running this week off-Broadway at the AMT Theater (354 West 45th Street) in Manhattan.

The One: The Life of Muhammad Ali was written by David Serero, who has produced and directed the show in addition to playing the role of Angelo Dundee in the three-man drama. Serero, age 43, was born in Paris, is of Moroccan-French-Jewish heritage, and has excelled professionally as an opera singer (baritone) and actor (stage and screen).

Let’s get the negatives out of the way first. The play is flawed. There are glaring factual inaccuracies in the script that add nothing to the dramatic arc and detract from its credibility.

On the plus side; Zack Bazile (pictured) is exceptionally good as Ali. And Serero (wearing his director’s hat) brings the most out of him.

Growing up, Bazile (now 28) excelled in multiple sports. In 2018, while attending Ohio State, he won the NCAA Long Jump Championship and was named Big Ten Field Athlete of the Year. He also dabbled in boxing, competed in two amateur fights in 2022, and won both by knockout. He began acting three years ago.

Serero received roughly one thousand resumes when he published notices for a casting call in search of an actor to play Ali. One-hundred-twenty respondents were invited to audition.

“I had people who looked like Ali and were accomplished actors,” Serero recalls. “But when they were in the room, I didn’t feel Ali in front of me. You have to remember; we’re dealing with someone who really existed and there’s video of him, so it’s not like asking someone to play George Washington.”

And Ali was Ali. That’s a hard act to follow.

Bazile is a near-perfect fit. At 6-feet-2-inches tall, 195 pounds, he conveys Ali’s physicality. His body is sculpted in the manner of the young Ali. He moves like an athlete because he is an athlete. His face resembles Ali’s and his expressions are very much on the mark in the way he transmits emotion to the audience. He uses his voice the way Ali did. He moves his eyes the way Ali did. He has THE LOOK.

Zack was born the year that Ali lit the Olympic flame in Atlanta, so he has no first-hand memory of the young Ali who set the world ablaze. “But as an actor,” he says, “I’m representing Ali. That’s a responsibility I take very seriously. Everyone has an essence about them. I had to find the right balance – not too over the top – and capture that.”

Sitting in the audience watching Bazile, I felt at times as though it was Ali onstage in front of me. Zack has the pre-exile Ali down perfectly. The magic dissipates a bit as the stage Ali grows older. Bazile still has to add the weight of aging to his craft. But I couldn’t help but think, “Muhammad would have loved watching Zack play him.”

****

Twenty-four hours after the premiere of The One, David Serero left the stage for a night to shine brightly in a real boxing ring., The occasion was the tenth fight card that Larry Goldberg has promoted at Sony Hall in New York, a run that began with Goldberg’s first pro show ever on October 13, 2022.

Most of the fights on the six-bout card played out as expected. But two were tougher for the favorites than anticipated. Jacob Riley Solis was held to a draw by Daniel Jefferson. And Andy Dominguez was knocked down hard by Angel Meza in round three before rallying to claim a one-point split-decision triumph.

Serero sang the national anthem between the second and third fights and stilled the crowd with a virtuoso performance. Fans at sports events are usually restless during the singing of the anthem. This time, the crowd was captivated. Serero turned a flat ritual into an inspirational moment. People were turning to each other and saying “Wow!”

****

The unexpected happened in Tijuana last Saturday night when 25-to-1 underdog Bruno Surace climbed off the canvas after a second-round knockdown to score a shocking, one-punch, sixth-round stoppage of Jaime Munguia. There has been a lot of commentary since then about what happened that night. The best explanation I’ve heard came from a fan named John who wrote, “The fight was not over in the second round although Munguia thought it was because, if he caught him once, he would naturally catch him again. Plus he looked at this little four KO guy [Surace had scored 4 knockouts in 27 fights] the way all the fans did, like he had no punch. That is what a fan can afford to do. But a fighter should know better. The ref reminds you, ‘Protect yourself at all times.’ Somebody forgot that.”

photo (c) David Serero

Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – MY MOTHER and me – is a personal memoir available at Amazon.com. https://www.amazon.com/My-Mother-Me-Thomas-Hauser/dp/1955836191/ref=sr_1_1?crid=5C0TEN4M9ZAH&keywords=thomas+hauser&qid=1707662513&sprefix=thomas+hauser%2Caps%2C80&sr=8-1

In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism. In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!

L.A.’s Rudy Hernandez is the 2024 TSS Trainer of the Year

Published

2 days ago

December 16, 2024

Arne K. Lang

L.A.’s Rudy Hernandez is the 2024 TSS Trainer of the Year

If asked to name a prominent boxing trainer who operates out of a gym in Los Angeles, the name Freddie Roach would jump immediately to mind. Best known for his work with Manny Pacquaio, Roach has been named the Trainer of the Year by the Boxing Writers Association of America a record seven times.

A mere seven miles from Roach’s iconic Wild Card Gym is the gym that Rudy Hernandez now calls home. Situated in the Little Tokyo neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles, the L.A. Boxing Gym – a relatively new addition to the SoCal boxing landscape — is as nondescript as its name. From the outside, one would not guess that two reigning world champions, Junto Nakatani and Anthony Olascuaga, were forged there.

As Freddie Roach will be forever linked with Manny Pacquiao, so will Rudy Hernandez be linked with Nakatani. The Japanese boxer was only 15 years old when his parents packed him off to the United States to be tutored by Hernandez. With Hernandez in his corner, the lanky southpaw won titles at 112 and 115 and currently holds the WBO bantamweight (118) belt. In his last start, he knocked out his Thai opponent, a 77-fight veteran who had never been stopped, advancing his record to 29-0 (22 KOs).

Nakatani’s name now appears on several pound-for-pound lists. A match with Japanese superstar Naoya Inoue is brewing. When that match comes to fruition, it will be the grandest domestic showdown in Japanese boxing history.

“Junto Nakatani is the greatest fighter I’ve ever trained. It’s easy to work with him because even when he came to me at age 15, his focus was only on boxing. It was to be a champion one day and nothing interfered with that dream,” Hernandez told sports journalist Manouk Akopyan writing for Boxing Scene.

Akin to Nakatani, Rudy Hernandez built Anthony Olascuaga from scratch. The LA native was rucked out of obscurity in April of 2023 when Jonathan Gonzalez contracted pneumonia and was forced to withdraw from his date in Tokyo with lineal light flyweight champion Kenshiro Teraji. Olascuaga, with only five pro fights under his belt, filled the breach on 10 days’ notice and although he lost (TKO by 9), he earned kudos for his gritty performance against the man recognized as the best fighter in his weight class.

Two fights later, back in Tokyo, Olascuaga copped the WBO world flyweight title with a third-round stoppage of Riku Kano. His first defense came in October, again in Japan, and Olascuaga retained his belt with a first-round stoppage of the aforementioned Gonzalez. (This bout was originally ruled a no-contest as it ended after Gonzalez suffered a cut from an accidental clash of heads. But the referee ruled that Gonzalez was fit to continue before the Puerto Rican said “no mas,” alleging his vision was impaired, and the WBO upheld a protest from the Olascuaga camp and changed the result to a TKO. Regardless, Rudy Hernandez’s fighter would have kept his title.)

Hernandez, 62, is the brother of the late Genaro “Chicanito” Hernandez. A two-time world title-holder at 130 pounds who fought the likes of Azumah Nelson, Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather Jr., Chicanito passed away in 2011, a cancer victim at age 45.

Genaro “Chicanito” Hernandez was one of the most popular fighters in the Hispanic communities of Southern California. Rudy Hernandez, a late bloomer of sorts – at least in terms of public recognition — has kept his brother’s flame alive with own achievements. He is a worthy honoree for the 2024 Trainer of the Year.

Note: This is the first in our series of annual awards. The others will arrive sporadically over the next two weeks.

Photo credit: Steve Kim

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!

A Shocker in Tijuana: Bruno Surace KOs Jaime Munguia !!

Published

3 days ago

December 15, 2024

Arne K. Lang

A-Shocker-in-Tijuana-Bruno-Sarace-KOs-Jaime-Munguia

It was a chilly night in Tijuana when Jaime Munguia entered the ring for his homecoming fight with Bruno Surace. The main event of a Zanfer/Top Rank co-promotion, Munguia vs. Surace was staged in the city’s 30,000-seat soccer stadium a stone’s throw from the U.S. border in the San Diego metroplex.

Surace, a Frenchman, brought a 25-0-2 record and a 22-fight winning streak, but a quick glance at his record showed that he had scant chance of holding his own with the house fighter. Only four of Surace’s 25 wins had come by stoppage and only eight of his wins had come against opponents with winning records. Munguia was making the first start in the city of his birth since February 2022. Surace had never fought outside Europe.

But hold the phone!

After losing every round heading into the sixth, Surace scored the Upset of the Year, ending the contest with a one-punch knockout.

It looked like a short and easy night for Munguia when he knocked Surace down with a left hook in the second stanza. From that point on, the Frenchman fought off his back foot, often with back to the ropes, throwing punches only in spurts. Munguia worked the body well and was seemingly on the way to wearing him down when he was struck by lightning in the form of an overhand right.

Down went Munguia, landing on his back. He struggled to get to his feet, but the referee waived it off a nano-second before reaching “10.” The official time was 2:36 of round six.

Munguia, who was 44-1 heading in with 35 KOs, was as high as a 35/1 favorite. In his only defeat, he had gone the distance with Canelo Alvarez. This was the biggest upset by a French fighter since Rene Jacquot outpointed Donald Curry in 1989 and Jacquot had the advantage of fighting in his homeland.

Co-Main

Mexico City’s Alan Picasso, ranked #1 by the WBC at 122 pounds, scored a third-round stoppage of last-minute sub Yehison Cuello in a scheduled 10-rounder contested at featherweight. Picaso (31-0-1, 17 KOs) is a solid technician. He ended the bout with a left to the rib cage, a punch that weaved around Cuello’s elbow and didn’t appear to be especially hard. The referee stopped his count at “nine” and waived the fight off.

A 29-year-old Colombian who reportedly had been training in Tijuana, the overmatched Cuello slumped to 13-3-1.

Other Bouts of Note

In a ho-hum affair, junior middleweight Jorge Garcia advanced to 32-4 (26) with a 10-round unanimous decision over Uzbekistan’s Kudratillo Abudukakhorov (20-4). The judges had it 97-92 and 99-90 twice. There were no knockdowns, but Garcia had a point deducted in round eight for low blows.

Garcia displayed none of the power that he showed in his most recent fight three months ago in Arizona and when he knocked out his German opponent in 46 seconds. Abudukakhorov, who has competed mostly as a welterweight, came in at 158 1/4 pounds and didn’t look in the best of shape. The Uzbek was purportedly 170-10 as an amateur (4-5 per boxrec).

Super bantamweight Sebastian Hernandez improved to 18-0 (17 KOs) with a seventh-round stoppage of Argentine import Sergio Martin (14-5). The end came at the 2:39 mark of round seven when Martin’s corner threw in the towel. Earlier in the round, Martin lost his mouthpiece and had a point deducted for holding.

Hernandez wasn’t all that impressive considering the high expectations born of his high knockout ratio, but appeared to have injured his right hand during the sixth round.

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!