Martinez Can Go Home Again, But Maybe Not To Stay

Published

11 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.

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Bernard Fernandez

Avila Perspective, Chap. 282: Ryan’s Song, Golden Boy in Fresno and More

Published

14 hours ago

April 26, 2024

David A. Avila

Avila-Perspective-Chap-282-Ryan's-Song-Golden-Boy-in-Fresno-and-More

Don’t call it an upset.

Days after Ryan Garcia proved the experts wrong, those same experts are re-tooling their evaluation processes.

It’s mind-boggling to me that 95 percent thought Garcia had no chance. Hear me out.

First, Garcia and Haney fought six times as amateurs with each winning three. But this time with no head gear and smaller gloves, Garcia had to have at least a 50/50 chance of winning. He is faster and a more powerful puncher.

Facts.

Haney is a wonderful boxer with smooth, almost artistic movements. But history has taught us power and speed like Garcia’s can’t be discounted. Think way back to legendary fighters like Willie Pep and Sandy Sadler. All that excellent defensive skill could not prevent Sadler from beating Pep in three of their four meetings.

Power has always been an equalizer against boxing skill.

Ben Lira, one of the wisest and most experienced trainers in Southern California, always professed knockout power was the greatest equalizer in a fight. “You can be behind for nine rounds and one punch can change the outcome,” he said.

Another weird theory spreading before the fight was that Garcia would quit in the fight. That was a puzzling one. Getting stopped by a perfect body shot is not quitting. And that punch came from Gervonta “Tank” Davis who can really crack.

So how did Garcia do it?

In the opening round Ryan Garcia timed Devin Haney’s jab and countered with a snapping left hook that rattled and wobbled the super lightweight champion. After that, Garcia forced Haney to find another game plan.

Garcia and trainer Derrick James must have worked hours on that move.

I must confess that I first saw Garcia’s ability many years ago when he was around 11 or 12. So I do have an advantage regarding his talent. A few things I noticed even back then were his speed and power. Also, that others resented his talent but respected him. He was the guy with everything: talent and looks.

And that brings resentment.

Recently I saw him and his crew rapping a song on social media. Now he’s got a song. Next thing you know Hollywood will be calling and he’ll be in the movies. It’s happened before with fighters such as Art Aragon, the first Golden Boy in the 50s. He was dating movie stars and getting involved with starlets all over Hollywood.

Is history repeating itself or is Garcia creating a new era for boxing?

Since 2016 people claimed he was just a social media creation. Now, after his win over Devin Haney a former undisputed lightweight champion and the WBC super lightweight titleholder, the boxer from the high desert area of Victorville has become one of the highest paid fighters in the world.

Ryan Garcia has entered a new dimension.

Golden Boy Season

After several down years the Los Angeles-based company Golden Boy Promotions suddenly is cracking the whip in 2024.

Avila

Vergil Ortiz Jr. (20-0, 20 KOs) returns to the ring and faces Puerto Rico’s Thomas Dulorme (26-6-1, 17 KOs) a welterweight gatekeeper who lost to Jaron “Boots” Ennis and Eimantas Stanionis. They meet as super welterweights in the co-main event at Save Mart Arena in Fresno, Calif. on Saturday, April 27. DAZN will stream the Golden Boy Promotions card live.

It’s a quick return to action for Ortiz who is still adjusting to the new weight division. His last fight three months ago ended in less than one round in Las Vegas. It was cut short by an antsy referee and left Ortiz wanting more after more than a year of inactivity in the prize ring.

Ortiz has all the weapons.

Also, Northern California’s Jose Carlos Ramirez (28-1, 18 KOs) meets Cuba’s Rances Barthelemy (30-2-1, 15 KOs) in a welterweight affair set for 12 rounds.

It’s difficult to believe that former super lightweight titlist Ramirez has been written off by fans after only one loss. That was several years ago against Scotland’s Josh Taylor. One loss does not mean the end of a career.

“My goal is to get back on top and to get all those belts back. I still feel like I am one of the best 140-pounders in the division,” said Ramirez who lives in nearby Avenal, Calif.

An added major attraction features Marlen Esparza in a unification rematch against Gabriela “La Chucky” Alaniz for the WBA, WBC, WBO flyweight titles. Their first fight was

a controversial win by Esparza that saw one judge give her nine of 10 rounds in a very close fight. Those Texas judges.

In a match that could steal the show, Oscar Duarte (26-2-1, 21 KOs) faces former world champion Jojo Diaz (33-5-1, 15 KOs) in a lightweight match.

Munguia and Canelo

Don’t sleep on this match.

Its current Golden Boy fighter Jaime Munguia facing former Golden Boy fighter Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in a battle between Mexico’s greatest sluggers next week at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on May 4.

“I think Jaime Munguia is going to do something special in the ring,” said Oscar De La Hoya, the CEO for Golden Boy.

Tijuana’s Munguia showed up at the Wild Card Boxing gym in Hollywood where a throng of media from Mexico and the US met him.

Munguia looked confident and happy about his opportunity to fight great Canelo.

“It’s a hard fight,” said Munguia. “Truth is, its big for Mexico and not only for Mexicans but for boxing.”

Fights to Watch

Fri. DAZN 6 p.m. Yoeniz Tellez (7-0) vs Joseph Jackson (19-0).

Sat. DAZN 9:30 a.m. Peter McGrail (8-1) vs Marc Leach (18-3-1); Beatriz Ferreira (4-0) vs Yanina Del Carmen 14-3).

Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. Vergil Ortiz (20-0) vs Thomas Dulorme (26-6-1); Jose Carlos Ramirez (28-1) vs Rances Barthelemy (30-2-1); Marlen Esparza (14-1) vs Gabriela Alaniz (14-1).

Photo credit: Cris Esqueda / Golden Boy Promotions

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Ramon Cardenas Channels Micky Ward and KOs Eduardo Ramirez on ProBox

Published

2 days ago

April 24, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Ramon-Cardenas-Channels-Micky-Ward-and-KOs-Eduardo-Ramirez-on-ProBox

The Wednesday night bi-monthly series of fights on the ProBox TV platform is the best deal in boxing; the livestream is free with no strings attached! Tonight’s episode was headlined by a super bantamweight match between San Antonio’s Ramon Cardenas and Eduardo Ramirez who brought a caravan of rooters from his hometown in Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico.

Cardenas, coached by Joel Diaz, entered the contest ranked #4 by the WBA. He was expected to handle Ramirez with little difficulty, but this was a close, tactical fight through eight frames when lightning struck in the form of a left hook to the liver from Cardenas. Ramirez went down on one knee and wasn’t able to beat the count. It was as if Cardenas summoned the ghost of Micky Ward who had a penchant for terminating fights with the same punch that arrived out of the blue.

The official time was 1:37 of round nine. Cardenas improved to 25-1 with his14th win inside the distance. Ramirez, who was stopped in the opening round by Nick “Wrecking” Ball in London in his lone previous fight outside Mexico, falls to 23-3-3.

Co-Feature

In an upset, Tijuana super welterweight Damian Sosa won a split decision over previously undefeated Marques Valle, a local area fighter who was stepping up in class in his first 10-round go. Sosa was the aggressor, repeatedly backing his taller opponent into the ropes where Valle was unable to get good leverage behind his punches.

The 25-year-old Valle, managed by the influential David McWater, was the house fighter. This was his 10^th appearance in this building. He brought a 10-0 (7) record and was hoping to emulate the success of his younger brother Dominic Valle who scored a second-round stoppage of his opponent in this ring two weeks ago, improving to 9-0. But Sosa, who brought a 24-2 record, proved to be a bridge too high.

The judges had it 97-93 and 96-94 for the Tijuana invader and a disgraceful 98-92 for the house fighter.

Also

In a fight whose abrupt ending would be echoed by the main event, 34-year-old SoCal featherweight Ronny Rios, now training in Las Vegas, returned to the ring after a 22-month hiatus and scored a fifth-round stoppage over Nicolas Polanco of the Dominican Republic.

A three-punch combo climaxed by a left hook to the liver took the breath out of Polanco who slumped to his knees and was counted out. A two-time world title challenger, Rios advanced to 34-4 (17 KOs). Polanco, 34, declined to 21-6-1. The official time was 0:54 of round five.

—

The next ProBox show (Wednesday, May 8) will have an international cast with fighters from Kazakhstan, Japan, Mongolia, and the United Kingdom. In the main event, Liverpool’s Robbie Davies Jr will make his U.S. debut against the California-based Kazakh Sergey Lipinets.

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Haney-Garcia Redux with the Focus on Harvey Dock

Published

4 days ago

April 22, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Haney-Garcia-Redux-with-the-Focus-on-Harvey-Dock

Saturday’s skirmish between Ryan Garcia and WBC super lightweight champion Devin Haney was a messy affair, and yet a hugely entertaining fight fused with great drama. In the aftermath, Garcia and Haney were celebrated – the former for fooling all the experts and the latter for his gallant performance in a losing effort – but there were only brickbats for the third man in the ring, referee Harvey Dock.

Devin Haney was plainly ahead heading into the seventh frame when there was a sudden turnabout when Garcia put him on the canvas with his vaunted left hook. Moments later, Dock deducted a point from Garcia for a late punch coming out of a break. The deduction forced a temporary cease-fire that gave Haney a few precious seconds to regain his faculties. Before the round was over, Haney was on the deck twice more but these were ruled slips.

The deduction, which effectively negated the knockdown, struck many as too heavy-handed as Dock hadn’t previously issued a warning for this infraction. Moreover, many thought he could have taken a point away from Haney for excessive clinching. As for Haney’s second and third trips to the canvas in round seven, they struck this reporter – watching at home – as borderline, sufficient to give referee Dock the benefit of the doubt.

In a post-fight interview, Ryan Garcia faulted the referee for denying him the satisfaction of a TKO. “At the end of the day, Harvey Dock, I think he was tripping,” said Garcia. “He could have stopped that fight.”

Those that played the rounds proposition, placing their coin on the “under,” undoubtedly felt the same way.

The internet lit up with comments assailing Dock’s competence and/or his character. Some of the ponderings were whimsical, but they were swamped by the scurrilous screeching of dolts who find a conspiracy under every rock.

Stephen A. Smith, reputedly America’s highest-paid TV sports personality, was among those that felt a need to weigh-in: “This referee is absolutely terrible….Unreal! Horrible officiating,” tweeted Stephen A whose primary area of expertise is basketball.

Harvey Dock

Dock fought as an amateur and had one professional fight, winning a four-round decision over a fellow novice on a show at a non-gaming resort in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. He says that as an amateur he was merely average, but he was better than that, a New Jersey and regional amateur champion in 1993 and 1994 while a student New Jersey’s Essex County Community College where he majored in journalism.

A passionate fan of Sugar Ray Leonard, he started officiating amateur fights in 1998 and six years later, at age 32, had his first documented action at the professional level, working low-level cards in New Jersey. The top boxing referees, to a far greater extent than the top judges, had long apprenticeships, having worked their way up from the boonies and Dock is no exception.

Per boxrec, Haney vs Garcia was Harvey Dock’s 364^th assignment in the pros and his forty-second world title fight. Some of those title fights were title in name only, they weren’t even main events, but, bit by bit, more lucrative offerings started coming his way.

On May 13, 2023, Dock worked his first fights in Nevada, a 4-rounder and then a 12-rounder on a card at the Cosmopolitan topped by the 140-pound title fight between Rolly Romero and Ismael Barroso. It was the first time that this reporter got to watch Dock in the flesh.

Ironically (in hindsight), the card would be remembered for the actions of a referee, in this case Tony Weeks who handled the main event. Barroso was winning the fight on all three cards when Weeks stepped in and waived it off in the ninth round after Romero cornered Barroso against the ropes and let loose a barrage of punches, none of which landed cleanly. Few “premature stoppages” were ever as garishly, nay ghoulishly, premature.

With all the brickbats raining down on Weeks, I felt a need to tamp down the noise by diverting attention away from Tony Weeks and toward Harvey Dock and took to the TSS Forum to share my thoughts. Referencing the 12-rounder, a robust junior welterweight affair between Batyr Akhmedov and Kenneth Sims Jr, I noted that Dock’s Las Vegas debut went smoothly. He glided effortlessly around the ring, making him inconspicuous, the mark of a good referee. (This post ran on May 15, two days after the fight.)

Folks at the Nevada State Athletic Commission were also paying attention. Dock was back in Las Vegas the following week to referee the lightweight title fight between Devin Haney and Vasyl Lomachenko and before the year was out, he would be tabbed to referee the biggest non-heavyweight fight of the year, the July 29 match in Las Vegas between Terence Crawford and Errol Spence Jr.

The Haney-Garcia fight wasn’t Harvey Dock’s best hour, I’ll concede that, but a closer look at his full body of work informs us that he is an outstanding referee.

—

While the Haney-Garcia bout was in progress, WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman threw everyone a curve ball, tweeting on “X” that Devin Haney would keep his title if he lost the fight. Everyone, including the TV commentators, was under the impression that the title would become vacant in the event that Haney lost.

Sulaiman cited the precedent of Corrales-Castillo II.

FYI: The Corrales-Castillo rematch, originally scheduled for June 3, 2005 and aborted on the day prior when Castillo failed to make weight, finally came off on Oct. 8 of that year, notwithstanding the fact that Castillo failed to make weight once again, scaling three-and-a-half pounds above the lightweight limit. He knocked out Corrales in the fourth round with a left hook that Las Vegas Review-Journal boxing writer Kevin Iole, alluding to the movie “Blazing Saddles,” described as Mongo-esque (translation: the punch would have knocked out a horse). After initially insisting on a rubber match, which had scant chance of happening, WBC president Jose Sulaiman, Mauricio’s late father, ruled that Corrales could keep his title.

Whether or not you agree with Mauricio Sulaiman’s rationale, the timing of his announcement was certainly awkward.

Haney’s mandatory is Spanish southpaw Sandor Martin (42-3, 15 KOs), a cutie best known for his 2021 upset of Mikey Garcia. A bout between Haney and Martin has the earmarks of a dull fight.

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