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Sergey Kovalev Nominated as New “Baddest Man on the Planet”

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. – Evil Empire? What Evil Empire?
Not only are the Russians coming, they’re already here. This might come as a surprise to those who remember then-President Ronald Reagan’s description of the “Red Menace” that Americans had to be prepared to combat, but the Russkies are increasingly popular in the United States and Canada … just about everywere, in fact, where fight fans attach higher importance to a boxer’s excitement quotient than his originating country.
WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev (23-0-1, 21 KOs) met with the media here Saturday afternoon, a few hours before the HBO-televised tripleheader headlined by a title defense by WBA/WBO super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux against Joseph Agbeko, and he stood as living proof that, well, the Cold War – at least in the ring – has thawed considerably.
A little more than a year ago, the now-30-year-old Kovalev was a free agent whose manager, Egis Klimas, was pitching his guy to any American promoter who would listen. Most of them said thanks, but no thanks.
And now? Kovalev, if not the very hottest property in the fight game, is raising his personal heat index with each spectacular knockout. On Nov. 30, he needed less than a minute into round two to bomb out challenger Ismayl Sillakh in Le Colisee de Quebec in Quebec City. The other 175-pound titlist fighting that night, WBC champ Adonis “Superman” Stevenson (23-1, 20 KOs), didn’t work quite that quickly, taking Tony Bellew into the sixth round before taking out the Englishman.
Amazing, isn’t it, that the fight everyone now wants to see is something hardly anyone knew they would want to see 17 months ago, when Kovalev was a virtual unknown, at least on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.
Clearly, power-punching guys are easy sells. If there is anything that seems absolutely certain, it is that a slugfest between Kovalev and Stevenson, if and when it occurs, will not go the distance.
Until that happens, we will have to settle for the standard war of words. Stevenson has said his preference is that his next opponent be nearly-49-year-old Bernard Hopkins (54-6-2, 32 KOs), the IBF light heavyweight champ, or England’s Carl Froch (32-2, 23 KOs), who would be moving up from super middleweight.
“They don’t seem too interested (in fighting Kovalev just yet),” Main Events president Kathy Duva, Kovalev’s American promoter, said of her inquiries to Stevenson’s promoter, Yvon Michel. “I spoke to Yvon a couple of days before the fights in Quebec. But once Sergey’s fight was over, I tried to speak to him again and I couldn’t get him to talk to me. I kind of took that as a sign that he has other plans for Stevenson.”
Klimas said he thinks he knows the reason why Team Stevenson is looking elsewhere.
“For Stevenson, we are changing Sergey’s nickname. He’s not going to be `Krusher’ Kovalev. He is going to be `Kryptonite’ Kovalev. Kryptonite brings down Superman, yes?”
Entering the last few weeks of 2013, both Kovalev – a resident of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., by way of his native Chelyabinsk, Russia — and Stevenson, a native of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, who now calls Longueuli, Quebec, home, are strong candidates for Fighter of the Year. Each has been exceptionally busy for world-class fighters, logging four bouts apiece, totaling eight KOs between them.
“It’s not just that Sergey wins; it’s the way he wins,” Duva said of the new lead pony in her promotional stable. “It’s just so compelling. You can’t look away. And Stevenson is like that, too.
“Everybody wants to see that fight. I can’t believe that if you saw the two of them fight separately last week, you wouldn’t want to see them fight each other. But who knows when it will happen, or even if it will happen. That fight might be worth more later, I don’t know. My fear is that we have captured lightning in a bottle and if we don’t make that fight soon, it might not ever happen.”
To understand just how far and how fast Kovalev has come, you have to go back at least to June 2012 or, if you really want to be precise, to late 1989, when the first wave of fighters from the old Soviet Union came to America to the kind of hostility generally reserved for hated enemies of Our Way of Life.
A California-based promoter, Lou Falcigno, brought over the first wave of Russian fighters – lightweight Sergei Artemiev, middleweight Viktor Egorov and heavyweight Yuri Vaulin — to the U.S. in December 1989. Their ring appearances in this country were greeted with chants of “USA! USA!” and undisguised animosity.
Vaulin (as a cruiserweight) and Artemiev, who was forced to retire after suffering a brain bleed in his final fight against Carl Griffith, each fought and lost in bids for USBA championships, but they never came close to making the sort of impact here and around the world that Kovalev, junior welterweight Ruslan Provodnikov (Siberia) and middleweight Gennady Golovkin (Kazakhstan) are making now.
“Five years ago, when we started with Tomasz Adamek (of Poland), we were told that an Eastern European could never be successful in America,” Duva said. “That’s one of the reasons you never saw anyone from that part of the world fight on HBO, or hardly ever. If one of those guys did fight here, it was as the opponent. They weren’t the one being built up.
“Now the perception has changed dramatically. It’s not about your ethnicity; it’s about how much excitement you generate. If you’re exciting – and Sergey is definitely exciting – none of that other stuff matters. We live in a different world now.”
Kovalev, for sure, didn’t get any big build-up. He was being offered around by Klimas, whose entreaties were mostly met with disinterest.
“Egis had literally brought Sergey to every promoter in the United States and been turned down,” Duva recalled. “He met with us one day and said, `I have this light heavyweight. All I ask you is to put him in a fight, with anybody you want. If you don’t like when it’s done, we won’t bother you again.’”
Duva figured, what the hell. She put Kovalev in against an opponent, Darnell Boone, he’d struggled with nearly two years earlier in winning an eight-round split decision. This time, Kovalev destroyed Boone in two rounds.
“We don’t often see Russell (veteran promoter J Russell Peltz, who serves as matchmaker for NBC SportsNet’s fight series) get excited, but he came tearing across the arena, ran up to me and said, `Who is that guy? He’s amazing!’”
With each emphatic knockout registered by Kovalev, Provodnikov and Golovkin, another brick gets chipped out of what remains of the wall that once separated these United States from the erstwhile Evil Empire.
“Sergey appeals to everybody,” Duva said. “He transcends nationality. He’s so warm, so approachable. He’s not anything like Ivan Drago (the remorseless Soviet heavyweight portrayed by Dolph Lundgren in 1985’s Rocky IV). Until the bell rings, that is. Then he becomes Drago.”
We now open our arms to the Dragos, just as we opened them to homegrown fighters and those from other countries that bring some needed buzz to a sport that cherishes punching power regardless of what flag the big hitter is flying.
“At the postfight press conference after one of his fights, a reporter asked a question about what Sergey had said to the guy after he knocked him down. He said, `What did you want him to do at that point? Did you want (the referee to step in and end) the fight? Sergey said, `No, I wanted him to get up so I could hit him again.’
“Roberto Duran was like that. Mike Tyson was like that. There are few guys who you could call the baddest man on the planet. I can’t think of anyone since Tyson that you could give that moniker to, but Sergey just might be that guy.”
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Avila Perspective, Chap. 323: Benn vs Eubank Family Feud and More

Next generation rivals Conor Benn and Chris Eubank Jr. carry on the family legacy of feudal warring in the prize ring on Saturday.
This is huge in British boxing.
Eubank (34-3, 25 KOs) holds the fringe IBO middleweight title but won’t be defending it against the smaller welterweight Benn (23-0, 14 KOs) on Saturday, April 26, at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London. DAZN will stream the Matchroom Boxing card.
This is about family pride.
The parents of Eubank and Benn actually began the feud in the 1990s.
Papa Nigel Benn fought Papa Chris Eubank twice. Losing as a middleweight in November 1990 at Birmingham, England, then fighting to a draw as a super middleweight in October 1993 in Manchester. Both were world title fights.
Eubank was undefeated and won the WBO middleweight world title in 1990 against Nigel Benn by knockout. He defended it three times before moving up and winning the vacant WBO super middleweight title in September 1991. He defended the super middleweight title 14 times until suffering his first pro defeat in March 1995 against Steve Collins.
Benn won the WBO middleweight title in April 1990 against Doug DeWitt and defended it once before losing to Eubank in November 1990. He moved up in weight and took the WBC super middleweight title from Mauro Galvano in Italy by technical knockout in October 1992. He defended the title nine times until losing in March 1996. His last fight was in November 1996, a loss to Steve Collins.
Animosity between the two families continues this weekend in the boxing ring.
Conor Benn, the son of Nigel, has fought mostly as a welterweight but lately has participated in the super welterweight division. He is several inches shorter in height than Eubank but has power and speed. Kind of a British version of Gervonta “Tank” Davis.
“It’s always personal, every opponent I fight is personal. People want to say it’s strictly business, but it’s never business. If someone is trying to put their hands on me, trying to render me unconscious, it’s never business,” said Benn.
This fight was scheduled twice before and cut short twice due to failed PED tests by Benn. The weight limit agreed upon is 160 pounds.
Eubank, a natural middleweight, has exchanged taunts with Benn for years. He recently avenged a loss to Liam Smith with a knockout victory in September 2023.
“This fight isn’t about size or weight. It’s about skill. It’s about dedication. It’s about expertise and all those areas in which I excel in,” said Eubank. “I have many, many more years of experience over Conor Benn, and that will be the deciding factor of the night.”
Because this fight was postponed twice, the animosity between the two feuding fighters has increased the attention of their fans. Both fighters are anxious to flatten each other.
“He’s another opponent in my way trying to crush my dreams. trying to take food off my plate and trying to render me unconscious. That’s how I look at him,” said Benn.
Eubank smiles.
“Whether it’s boxing, whether it’s a gun fight. Defense, offense, foot movement, speed, power. I am the superior boxer in each of those departments and so many more – which is why I’m so confident,” he said.
Supporting Bout
Former world champion Liam Smith (33-4-1, 20 KOs) tangles with Ireland’s Aaron McKenna (19-0, 10 KOs) in a middleweight fight set for 12 rounds on the Benn-Eubank undercard in London.
“Beefy” Smith has long been known as one of the fighting Smith brothers and recently lost to Eubank a year and a half ago. It was only the second time in 38 bouts he had been stopped. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez did it several years ago.
McKenna is a familiar name in Southern California. The Irish fighter fought numerous times on Golden Boy Promotion cards between 2017 and 2019 before returning to the United Kingdom and his assault on continuing the middleweight division. This is a big step for the tall Irish fighter.
It’s youth versus experience.
“I’ve been calling for big fights like this for the last two or three years, and it’s a fight I’m really excited for. I plan to make the most of it and make a statement win on Saturday night,” said McKenna, one of two fighting brothers.
Monster in L.A.
Japan’s super star Naoya “Monster” Inoue arrived in Los Angeles for last day workouts before his Las Vegas showdown against Ramon Cardenas on Sunday May 4, at T-Mobile Arena. ESPN will televise and stream the Top Rank card.
It’s been four years since the super bantamweight world champion performed in the US and during that time Naoya (29-0, 26 KOs) gathered world titles in different weight divisions. The Japanese slugger has also gained fame as perhaps the best fighter on the planet. Cardenas is 26-1 with 14 KOs.
Pomona Fights
Super featherweights Mathias Radcliffe (9-0-1) and Ezequiel Flores (6-4) lead a boxing card called “DMG Night of Champions” on Saturday April 26, at the historic Fox Theater in downtown Pomona, Calif.
Michaela Bracamontes (11-2-1) and Jesus Torres Beltran (8-4-1) will be fighting for a regional WBC super featherweight title. More than eight bouts are scheduled.
Doors open at 6 p.m. For ticket information go to: www.tix.com/dmgnightofchampions
Fights to Watch
Sat. DAZN 9 a.m. Conor Benn (23-0) vs Chris Eubank Jr. (34-3); Liam Smith (33-4-1) vs Aaron McKenna (19-0).
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Floyd Mayweather has Another Phenom and his name is Curmel Moton

Floyd Mayweather has Another Phenom and his name is Curmel Moton
In any endeavor, the defining feature of a phenom is his youth. Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Bryce Harper was a phenom. He was on the radar screen of baseball’s most powerful player agents when he was 14 years old.
Curmel Moton, who turns 19 in June, is a phenom. Of all the young boxing stars out there, wrote James Slater in July of last year, “Curmel Moton is the one to get most excited about.”
Moton was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. His father Curtis Moton, a barber by trade, was a big boxing fan and specifically a big fan of Floyd Mayweather Jr. When Curmel was six, Curtis packed up his wife (Curmel’s stepmom) and his son and moved to Las Vegas. Curtis wanted his son to get involved in boxing and there was no better place to develop one’s latent talents than in Las Vegas where many of the sport’s top practitioners came to train.
Many father-son relationships have been ruined, or at least frayed, by a father’s unrealistic expectations for his son, but when it came to boxing, the boy was a natural and he felt right at home in the gym.
The gym the Motons patronized was the Mayweather Boxing Club. Curtis took his son there in hopes of catching the eye of the proprietor. “Floyd would occasionally drop by the gym and I was there so often that he came to recognize me,” says Curmel. What he fails to add is that the trainers there had Floyd’s ear. “This kid is special,” they told him.
It costs a great deal of money for a kid to travel around the country competing in a slew of amateur boxing tournaments. Only a few have the luxury of a sponsor. For the vast majority, fund raisers such as car washes keep the wheels greased.
Floyd Mayweather stepped in with the financial backing needed for the Motons to canvas the country in tournaments. As an amateur, Curmel was — take your pick — 156-7 or 144-6 or 61-3 (the latter figure from boxrec). Regardless, at virtually every tournament at which he appeared, Curmel Moton was the cock of the walk.
Before the pandemic, Floyd Mayweather Jr had a stable of boxers he promoted under the banner of “The Money Team.” In talking about his boxers, Floyd was understated with one glaring exception – Gervonta “Tank” Davis, now one of boxing’s top earners.
When Floyd took to praising Curmel Moton with the same effusive language, folks stood up and took notice.
Curmel made his pro debut on Sept. 30, 2023, at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on the undercard of the super middleweight title fight between Canelo Alvarez and Jermell Charlo. After stopping his opponent in the opening round, he addressed a flock of reporters in the media room with Floyd standing at his side. “I felt ready,” he said, “I knew I had Floyd behind me. He believes in me. I had the utmost confidence going into the fight. And I went in there and did what I do.”
Floyd ventured the opinion that Curmel was already a better fighter than Leigh Wood, the reigning WBA world featherweight champion who would successfully defend his belt the following week.
Moton’s boxing style has been described as a blend of Floyd Mayweather and Tank Davis. “I grew up watching Floyd, so it’s natural I have some similarities to him,” says Curmel who sparred with Tank in late November of 2021 as Davis was preparing for his match with Isaac “Pitbull” Cruz. Curmell says he did okay. He was then 15 years old and still in school; he dropped out as soon as he reached the age of 16.
Curmel is now 7-0 with six KOs, four coming in the opening round. He pitched an 8-round shutout the only time he was taken the distance. It’s not yet official, but he returns to the ring on May 31 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas where Caleb Plant and Jermall Charlo are co-featured in matches conceived as tune-ups for a fall showdown. The fight card will reportedly be free for Amazon Prime Video subscribers.
Curmel’s presumptive opponent is Renny Viamonte, a 28-year-old Las Vegas-based Cuban with a 4-1-1 (2) record. It will be Curmel’s first professional fight with Kofi Jantuah the chief voice in his corner. A two-time world title challenger who began his career in his native Ghana, the 50-year-old Jantuah has worked almost exclusively with amateurs, a recent exception being Mikaela Mayer.
It would seem that the phenom needs a tougher opponent than Viamonte at this stage of his career. However, the match is intriguing in one regard. Viamonte is lanky. Listed at 5-foot-11, he will have a seven-inch height advantage.
Keeping his weight down has already been problematic for Moton. He tipped the scales at 128 ½ for his most recent fight. His May 31 bout, he says, will be contested at 135 and down the road it’s reasonable to think he will blossom into a welterweight. And with each bump up in weight, his short stature will theoretically be more of a handicap.
For fun, we asked Moton to name the top fighter on his pound-for-pound list. “[Oleksandr] Usyk is number one right now,” he said without hesitation,” great footwork, but guys like Canelo, Crawford, Inoue, and Bivol are right there.”
It’s notable that there isn’t a young gun on that list. Usyk is 38, a year older than Crawford; Inoue is the pup at age 32.
Moton anticipates that his name will appear on pound-for-pound lists within the next two or three years. True, history is replete with examples of phenoms who flamed out early, but we wouldn’t bet against it.
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Arne’s Almanac: The First Boxing Writers Assoc. of America Dinner Was Quite the Shindig

The first annual dinner of the Boxing Writers Association of America was staged on April 25, 1926 in the grand ballroom of New York’s Hotel Astor, an edifice that rivaled the original Waldorf Astoria as the swankiest hotel in the city. Back then, the organization was known as the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York.
The ballroom was configured to hold 1200 for the banquet which was reportedly oversubscribed. Among those listed as agreeing to attend were the governors of six states (New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Maryland) and the mayors of 10 of America’s largest cities.
In 1926, radio was in its infancy and the digital age was decades away (and inconceivable). So, every journalist who regularly covered boxing was a newspaper and/or magazine writer, editor, or cartoonist. And at this juncture in American history, there were plenty of outlets for someone who wanted to pursue a career as a sportswriter and had the requisite skills to get hired.
The following papers were represented at the inaugural boxing writers’ dinner:
New York Times
New York News
New York World
New York Sun
New York Journal
New York Post
New York Mirror
New York Telegram
New York Graphic
New York Herald Tribune
Brooklyn Eagle
Brooklyn Times
Brooklyn Standard Union
Brooklyn Citizen
Bronx Home News
This isn’t a complete list because a few of these papers, notably the New York World and the New York Journal, had strong afternoon editions that functioned as independent papers. Plus, scribes from both big national wire services (Associated Press and UPI) attended the banquet and there were undoubtedly a smattering of scribes from papers in New Jersey and Connecticut.
Back then, the event’s organizer Nat Fleischer, sports editor of the New York Telegram and the driving force behind The Ring magazine, had little choice but to limit the journalistic component of the gathering to writers in the New York metropolitan area. There wasn’t a ballroom big enough to accommodate a good-sized response if he had extended the welcome to every boxing writer in North America.
The keynote speaker at the inaugural dinner was New York’s charismatic Jazz Age mayor James J. “Jimmy” Walker, architect of the transformative Walker Law of 1920 which ushered in a new era of boxing in the Empire State with a template that would guide reformers in many other jurisdictions.
Prizefighting was then associated with hooligans. In his speech, Mayor Walker promised to rid the sport of their ilk. “Boxing, as you know, is closest to my heart,” said hizzoner. “So I tell you the police force is behind you against those who would besmirch or injure boxing. Rowdyism doesn’t belong in this town or in your game.” (In 1945, Walker would be the recipient of the Edward J. Neil Memorial Award given for meritorious service to the sport. The oldest of the BWAA awards, the previous recipients were all active or former boxers. The award, no longer issued under that title, was named for an Associated Press sportswriter and war correspondent who died from shrapnel wounds covering the Spanish Civil War.)
Another speaker was well-traveled sportswriter Wilbur Wood, then affiliated with the Brooklyn Citizen. He told the assembly that the aim of the organization was two-fold: to help defend the game against its detractors and to promote harmony among the various factions.
Of course, the 1926 dinner wouldn’t have been as well-attended without the entertainment. According to press dispatches, Broadway stars and performers from some of the city’s top nightclubs would be there to regale the attendees. Among the names bandied about were vaudeville superstars Sophie Tucker and Jimmy Durante, the latter of whom would appear with his trio, Durante, (Lou) Clayton, and (Eddie) Jackson.
There was a contraction of New York newspapers during the Great Depression. Although empirical evidence is lacking, the inaugural boxing writers dinner was likely the largest of its kind. Fifteen years later, in 1941, the event drew “more than 200” according to a news report. There was no mention of entertainment.
In 1950, for the first time, the annual dinner was opened to the public. For $25, a civilian could get a meal and mingle with some of his favorite fighters. Sugar Ray Robinson was the Edward J. Neil Award winner that year, honored for his ring exploits and for donating his purse from the Charlie Fusari fight to the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund.
There was no formal announcement when the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York was re-christened the Boxing Writers Association of America, but by the late 1940s reporters were referencing the annual event as simply the boxing writers dinner. By then, it had become traditional to hold the annual affair in January, a practice discontinued after 1971.
The winnowing of New York’s newspaper herd plus competing banquets in other parts of the country forced Nat Fleischer’s baby to adapt. And more adaptations will be necessary in the immediate future as the future of the BWAA, as it currently exists, is threatened by new technologies. If the forthcoming BWAA dinner (April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in mid-Manhattan) were restricted to wordsmiths from the traditional print media, the gathering would be too small to cover the nut and the congregants would be drawn disproportionately from the geriatric class.
Some of those adaptations have already started. Last year, Las Vegas resident Sean Zittel, a recent UNLV graduate, had the distinction of becoming the first videographer welcomed into the BWAA. With more and more people getting their news from sound bites, rather than the written word, the videographer serves an important function.
The reporters who conducted interviews with pen and paper have gone the way of the dodo bird and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A taped interview for a “talkie” has more integrity than a story culled from a paper and pen interview because it is unfiltered. Many years ago, some reporters, after interviewing the great Joe Louis, put words in his mouth that made him seem like a dullard, words consistent with the Sambo stereotype. In other instances, the language of some athletes was reconstructed to the point where the reader would think the athlete had a second job as an English professor.
The content created by videographers is free from that bias. More of them will inevitably join the BWAA and similar organizations in the future.
Photo: Nat Fleischer is flanked by Sugar Ray Robinson and Tony Zale at the 1947 boxing writers dinner.
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