Somebody Up There

Published

11 years ago

July 23, 2013

I’m neither saint nor sinner. I’m a gladiator.
—Sugar Ray Robinson

Two thousand years ago, the first bell summoning gladiators to ring center wasn’t a bell at all. It was a long, hollow blast from an ancient Roman wind instrument called a tibia . The tibia was also heard during public sacrifices and funerals, much like bells today are used at church and as a death toll.

The crowd’s roar at the Flavian Amphitheatre is still heard at the MGM Grand. It is an echo in time. Virgil’s words echo with it:
Now, let any man with heart,
with the fire in his chest, come forward—
put up his fists, strap on the rawhide gloves.

The Roman poet’s words are found in the Aeneid, which was written between 29 and 19 BC. Today, they dominate a wall at Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn.

The fighter comes forward like he always has, struggling to do unto the opponent what the opponent intends to do unto him —and doing it first. Hand-wringing turtledoves needn’t look much further to support their argument for boxing’s abolition, the strongest of which is not that it is the most dangerous sport (it isn’t), but that the intention of its participants is to inflict harm: “Clean punching” is the first of the four typical criteria judges use to score a round. That is what separates boxing from other sports, including mixed martial arts. Although the injury rate in the so-called savage science exceeds boxing’s, head trauma is less frequent in the octagon because there are more options to end matters early. Submission holds appear brutal, but they are, in fact, safer than a knockout. The beset MMA fighter need only “tap-out” to end his suffering. The beset boxer has no such option. He’d be better off letting an official halt the fight or just take one on the chin, because to quit would invite a scarlet letter for the rest of his life.

Ray Arcel’s career as a trainer spanned seven decades. “Only once,” he recalled, “did I have a fighter tell me he wanted to quit; he said, ‘I’m gonna quit this round.’ I said, ‘You can’t. There are people here. They paid to see these fights.'” Arcel lifted him off the stool and sent him out round after round. His fighter would not quit; instead he kept maneuvering the opponent’s back to the corner. “Ray!” he’d yell over a shoulder. “Throw in the towel!”

Boxing’s culture is not only older than the MMA’s, it’s tougher. It has spawned a mythos closest to the gladiator in ancient Rome, compelling the boxer to wade into danger when he knows he won’t win and to get up when he can’t. There are haunting images of fighters who should have quit and ended up half-conscious on their stool slipping invisible shots after the fight is called off, or laid out flat on the canvas with their eyelids fluttering, still punching up at the lights. The mythos lays heavy across shoulders that are rarely broad enough to uphold it. Sometimes something snaps. Four days before Bob Olin was scheduled to defend his light heavyweight crown, Arcel walked into his hotel room and found him standing there with his pants on over his pajamas and wearing an overcoat. “I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die,” Olin moaned. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I’m gonna die.” Arcel put him to bed and got him warm milk. “I stroked his hands and his forehead,” he said, “and talked to him like he was a baby.”

Trainer, author, humanitarian, and commentator on ESPN’s Friday Night Fights Teddy Atlas understands the mythos. He holds that the boxer is not as secure as assumed; that he is actually very insecure because he is acting against his own instincts for self-preservation—he is doing something “unnatural.” “You know, fighters don’t tell you they’re afraid,” Arcel said. “They don’t try to tell you what’s going on inside of them. They lose their food in the dressing room, and they’ll say it must have been something they ate.” Leaving the dressing room on fight night is the worst. Draped in a robe that feels like a shroud, the boxer walks to the ring, trainer in tow, like a condemned man walks to the death chamber, priest in tow.

Some fighters distract themselves with feigned bravura. Others surround themselves with familiars like security blankets: friends tag along behind. Ethnic garb is donned. Patriotic music blares. When Holman Williams walked toward a Baltimore ring to face his bête noir Cocoa Kid in 1940, Joe Louis and Jack Blackburn came with him. As if that wasn’t enough, he had a mysterious symbol stitched on the front of his robe and the words “I WILL” on the back. In recent years, gangsta rappers have accompanied champions en route to the ring to fill his ears with courage. (Bubblegum Justin Bieber followed Floyd Mayweather recently though the point of that was lost on me.) Older boxing fans will recall a premiere fighter who performed his own rap on the way to dispense with one more in a parade of mid-career soft touches. What fans may not recall is that this parade began after a rival ended up blind and disabled in a wheelchair.

It isn’t hard to understand, really. The truth of existence has a way of coming into focus when you’re flat on your back under the lights and there’s nowhere to look but up. Whether those lights are in an arena, a nursing home, or on a Chicago street is beside the point; we’ll all see them eventually. In this sense, the boxer is a proxy preparing the way for all of us. He takes self-reliance as far as it will go and finds it’s not enough. Advanced skill is cancelled out by a badly-timed blink and a shot he didn’t see as easily as the power of positive thinking is cancelled out by the Grim Reaper. It’s an awful truth. Pop culture has it all wrong—our fate, ultimately, is not in our hands. It’s a roll of the dice, a game of chance, blind luck.

Or is it?

The two best fighters today don’t consider themselves lucky; they consider themselves blessed. After super middleweight king Andre Ward stopped then light heavyweight king Chad Dawson, he was asked about the risks involved. “Give me five seconds,” Ward interrupted. “I want to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and all the people that’s been praying for me leading up to this fight.” After Mayweather defeated Robert Guerrero, he said “first off, I’d like to thank God for this victory.”

Character flaws don’t block the view. The most flawed among us tend to get knocked flat more than the rest and so don’t have to crank our heads to look up. Roberto Duran reached the peak of his spiteful splendor when he defeated Sugar Ray Leonard, only to fall from the sky like Lucifer when he quit the rematch. He was surging again in 1983 when he found himself in the ring with middleweight king and three-to-one favorite Marvin Hagler; an ominous challenge bigger and stronger than anything he had ever faced this side of a horse. Just before the first bell rang, Duran did something uncharacteristic—he crossed himself.

The praying boxer has been a motif at least since the modern era began in 1920. Harry Greb was a member of the Pittsburgh Lyceum, which was founded by a Roman Catholic priest who later presided over his marriage. Greb himself was a devout Catholic who donated thousands to his parish and rarely boxed or trained on Sundays. His successor to the middleweight throne was Tiger Flowers. Flowers was known as “the Deacon” and told the Atlanta Constitution that he took time after every fight to “thank God for the strength that brought me through.” When Ezzard Charles defeated Joe Louis, he said what his grandmother told him to say, “I’d like to give thanks to God for giving me the strength and courage to win the fight.” Henry Armstrong walked into a Harlem club to celebrate after he took the second of his three simultaneous crowns. After the manager greeted him, he felt “a strange touch on his shoulder.” He said it was God. After that, he made it a point to go off alone after his fights to pray. He was ordained a Baptist minister in 1951 and wrote an autobiography called Gloves, Glory, and God.

Sugar Ray Robinson was no exception. “I believe that of himself man can do nothing,” he said, “that he needs God to guide him and bless him.” When he first retired from the ring and tried show business, he made an oath to stay retired. “I intend to keep it,” he told a Franciscan priest in 1955, despite the fact that his new venture was an utter failure. “But I’m thousands behind. I want to pay my bills, but I can’t if I’m a hoofer.” Father Jovian Lang assured him that his boxing talent was a gift from his Maker and that it was all right to return to the ring. With the fighter on his knees, the priest gave him a blessing to protect him from harm, and by the end of the year, Sugar Ray was preparing to challenge the middleweight champion to reclaim his old crown. A reporter was in the dressing room twenty minutes before the fight. He noted that everyone walked lightly and spoke softly “almost as if they were at a funeral” while the fighter sucked an ice cube and paced to and fro like a man awaiting execution. The reporter was surprised to see him kiss a silver crucifix that was pinned to the inside of his trunks.

Sugar Ray scored a knockout in the fourth round, and cried all the way to the dressing room.

Within two years he would lose the title to Gene Fullmer and was training for the rematch when that old familiar fear overtook him. Father Jovian received a “distress call” from his wife. Sugar Ray “was tied up in knots, spiritually,” he said. “His confidence had begun to waver.” The priest and the thirty-six-year-old pugilist had several private sessions in the weeks leading up to the fight. When the priest noted that the bout would be on May 1st, the feast of St. Joseph the Worker, he added an intercessory prayer to that saint.

At Chicago Stadium, spectators saw a peculiar figure in a long brown robe shouting “Go to work, Ray! Go to work!” from a seat behind the Robinson corner. It was Father Jovian.

That thunderbolt of a left hook that Sugar Ray landed in the fifth round was a study in efficiency. It was set up on the retreat, knocked Fullmer out, and is remembered as perhaps the most perfect punch ever landed. It began his fourth reign on the middleweight throne and confirmed his status as one of history’s greatest gladiators.

As the crowds filed out of Chicago Stadium and well-wishers filed into his dressing room, an AP reporter noticed that a sense of wonder seemed to have swept over the new champion. “Somebody up there likes you,” the reporter said.

“He sure does,” said Sugar Ray, looking up. “He’s got His arm around me.”

This essay is dedicated to “Babs.”

Photo credit: “Chemin des brumes ii” by David Sénéchal Polydactyle, appears with permission. (http://www.oneeyeland.com/member/member_portfolio.php?pgrid=4875)

This essay includes information derived from the following: Alan Baker’s The Gladiator: The Secret History of Rome’s Warrior Slaves (2000), “Most Fighters are Scared,” by W.C. Heinz ( Saturday EveningPost, 6/24/1950), Sugar Ray by Sugar Ray Robinson with Dave Anderson (1970), “I Pray With Sugar Ray” by Jovian Lang, O.F.M. as told to John M. Ross (Milwaukee Sentinel, 3/23/1958),“A Portrait of the Fighter Who Did What They Said He Could Never Do” (LIFE, 12/19/1955). Steve Compton’s insights about Harry Greb were very much appreciated. Steve is currently working on a new and highly anticipated biography about Greb, scheduled for release in 2014.

Springs Toledo can be contacted at scalinatella@hotmail.com.

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Springs Toledo

The Challenge of Playing Muhammad Ali

Published

7 hours 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.

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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

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

Published

4 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

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