Could the D.C. Armory Become Washington, D.C.’s Boxing Institution?

Published

11 years ago

January 23, 2014

by Aaron Tallent

Unless you live in the District of Columbia, you probably find it odd that Lamont Peterson will defend his IBF Light Welterweight title against Dierry Jean at the headquarters of the Washington, D.C. National Guard. In actuality, the D.C. Armory has an arena that holds 10,000 people and if you call our nation’s capitol home, you’ve probably been in it at least once. For a city with a rich boxing history, but no institutions, the D.C. Armory may be the answer.

Peterson is just one of many champions to come out of the D.C. area. Sugar Ray Leonard, Mark Johnson and William Joppy are just a few others. Yet there is no single venue where greatness and boxing are expected. New York has Madison Square Garden, Philadelphia had the Blue Horizon, and Las Vegas has the MGM Grand and Mandalay Bay. The District has nothing of the sort. In a city that reinvents itself every four to eight years, an unstructured sport has little chance of finding a permanent home.

Things were a bit different during the sport’s golden era. Washington’s first recorded professional fight took place in 1882 and the next 50 years saw fights being staged in a variety of places ranging from athletic clubs to the city’s Marine Barracks to an Anheuser-Busch warehouse to Walter Reed General Hospital (now Walter Reed National Military Medical Center).

By the mid-1930s, the majority of the District’s fights were held in two venues. One was Turner’s Arena, an 1,800-seat arena owned by wrestling promoter Joe Turner that hosted fights on a frequent basis. Seven champions fought there.

The other was Griffith Stadium, the home of baseball’s Washington Senators and football’s Washington Redskins. In its heyday, Griffith could hold more the 29,000 spectators and it hosted 180 fights. Joe Louis defended his heavyweight title against Buddy Baer in 1941.

In that same year, the D.C. Armory opened as the headquarters and training facility of the District’s National Guard. The year also saw the completion of another historic D.C. landmark, the Uline Arena (now the Washington Coliseum). The 9,000-seat arena hosted numerous fights, but is best remembered for being the site of the Beatles’ first U.S. concert on February 11, 1964. Because the Uline’s stage was in the middle of the arena and designed to hold a boxing ring, the Fab Four performed their concert in the round.

In 1965, both Griffith Stadium and Turner’s Arena (then known as Capitol Arena), were closed. Vince McMahon, Sr., then the owner of Turner’s, sold it to the Washington City Orphan Asylum, who demolished it to build a clinic. Griffith Stadium closed because both the Redskins and the Senators had moved to the new D.C. Stadium (now RFK Stadium). It was also torn down and is now the site of Howard University Hospital.

The 1968 riots following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., destroyed the area surrounding the Uline and fights, concerts and all other events became less frequent. It closed in 1986 and is now the coolest parking garage in the country. For $100 a month, one can park his or her car on the floor where the Beatles first played.

Following the riots, D.C. followed the trend of many cities of building major arenas in the suburbs. The Capitol Centre opened in nearby Landover, Maryland, in 1973 and became the home of basketball’s Washington Bullets (now the Wizards), hockey’s Washington Capitol’s, and Georgetown Basketball. It also hosted 15 major fight cards between 1974 and 1975. Leonard fought there thrice and Muhammad Ali successfully defended his heavyweight title there against Jimmy Young in 1976 and Alfred Evangelista in 1977.

Meanwhile, the D.C. Armory explored ways to use it facilities. On December 9, 1975, the Armory hosted its first fight, with Larry Holmes knocking out Leon Shaw in the main event.

On May 22, 1993, the District held its most extravagant fight ever, a card at RFK Stadium where Riddick Bowe defended his heavyweight title again with a second round stoppage of Jesse Ferguson. This was also the event where Roy Jones, Jr., defeated Bernard Hopkins by decision to win the middleweight title. Unfortunately, a crowd of only 9,000 – 3,500 of who had tickets donated by Bowe’s manager Rock Newman – attended. A fight has never been held at RFK since then.

The Capitals and Wizards moved back into Washington in 1997 when the MCI Center (now the Verizon Center) was completed. The 20,000-seat arena has hosted three fight cards, the last one being Mike Tyson’s final fight in 2005. However, like most cities in the northeast wanting to host a major fight card, it is faced with the same truth: New York and the Garden are only a few hours away.

The Armory, on the other hand, provides the perfect alternative with its mid-range size. It is next to a subway/metro stop and shares thousands of parking spaces with the adjacent RFK Stadium. Also, part of the reason places do become boxing institutions is because they reflect the culture of the city. With the D.C. Armory, a military base located in theCapitol Hill neighborhood that has hosted inaugural balls for every president since Harry Truman and has been an integral part of the city for more than 70 years, I can’t think of a better fit.

Oh, and I also live four blocks away.

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 322: Super Welter Week in SoCal

Published

16 hours ago

April 18, 2025

David A. Avila

Avila-Perspective-Chap-322-Super-Welter-Week-in-SoCal

Two below-the-radar super welterweight stars show off their skills this weekend from different parts of Southern California.

One in particular, Charles Conwell, co-headlines a show in Oceanside against a hard-hitting Mexican while another super welter star Sadriddin Akhmedov faces another Mexican hitter in Commerce.

Take your pick.

The super welterweight division is loaded with talent at the moment. If Terence Crawford remained in the division he would be at the top of the class, but he is moving up several weight divisions.

Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) faces Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs) a tall knockout puncher from Los Mochis at the Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, Calif. on Saturday April 19. DAZN will stream the Golden Boy Promotions card that also features undisputed flyweight champion Gabriela Fundora. We’ll get to her later.

Conwell might be the best super welterweight out there aside from the big dogs like Vergil Ortiz, Serhii Bohachuk and Sebastian Fundora.

If you are not familiar with Conwell he comes from Cleveland, Ohio and is one of those fighters that other fighters know about. He is good.

He has the James “Lights Out” Toney kind of in-your-face-style where he anchors down and slowly deciphers the opponent’s tools and then takes them away piece by piece. Usually it’s systematic destruction. The kind you see when a skyscraper goes down floor by floor until it’s smoking rubble.

During the Covid days Conwell fought two highly touted undefeated super welters in Wendy Toussaint and Madiyar Ashkeyev. He stopped them both and suddenly was the boogie man of the super welterweight division.

Conwell will be facing Mexico’s taller Garcia who likes to trade blows as most Mexican fighters prefer, especially those from Sinaloa. These guys will be firing H bombs early.

Fundora

Co-headlining the Golden Boy card is Gabriela Fundora (15-0, 7 KOs) the undisputed flyweight champion of the world. She has all the belts and Mexico’s Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1, 3 KOs) wants them.

Gabriela Fundora is the sister of Sebastian Fundora who holds the men’s WBC and WBO super welterweight world titles. Both are tall southpaws with power in each hand to protect the belts they accumulated.

Six months ago, Fundora met Argentina’s Gabriela Alaniz in Las Vegas to determine the undisputed flyweight champion. The much shorter Alaniz tried valiantly to scrap with Fundora and ran into a couple of rocket left hands.

Mexico’s Badillo is an undefeated flyweight from Mexico City who has battled against fellow Mexicans for years. She has fought one world champion in Asley Gonzalez the current super flyweight world titlist. They met years ago with Badillo coming out on top.

Does Badillo have the skill to deal with the taller and hard-hitting Fundora?

When a fighter has a six-inch height advantage like Fundora, it is almost impossible to out-maneuver especially in two-minute rounds. Ask Alaniz who was nearly decapitated when she tried.

This will be Badillo’s first pro fight outside of Mexico.

Commerce Casino

Kazakhstan’s Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0, 13 KOs) is another dangerous punching super welterweight headlining a 360 Promotions card against Mexico’s Elias Espadas (23-6, 16 KOs) on Saturday at the Commerce Casino.

UFC Fight Pass will stream the 360 Promotions card of about eight bouts.

Akhmedov is another Kazakh puncher similar to the great Gennady “GGG” Golovkin who terrorized the middleweight division for a decade. He doesn’t have the same polish or dexterity but doesn’t lack pure punching power.

It’s another test for the super welterweight who is looking to move up the ladder in the very crowded 154-pound weight division. 360 Promotions already has a top contender in Ukraine’s Serhii Bohachuk who nearly defeated Vergil Ortiz a year ago.

Could Bohachuk and Akhmedov fight each other if nothing else materializes?

That’s a question for another day.

Fights to Watch

Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. Charles Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) vs. Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs); Gabriela Fundora (15-0) vs Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1).

Sat. UFC Fight Pass 6 p.m. Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0) vs Elias Espadas (23-6).

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TSS Salutes Thomas Hauser and his Bernie Award Cohorts

Published

3 days ago

April 16, 2025

TSS Press

TSS-Salutes-Thomas-Hauser-and-his-Bernie-Award-Cohorts

The Boxing Writers Association of America has announced the winners of its annual Bernie Awards competition. The awards, named in honor of former five-time BWAA president and frequent TSS contributor Bernard Fernandez, recognize outstanding writing in six categories as represented by stories published the previous year.

Over the years, this venerable website has produced a host of Bernie Award winners. In 2024, Thomas Hauser kept the tradition alive. A story by Hauser that appeared in these pages finished first in the category “Boxing News Story.” Titled “Ryan Garcia and the New York State Athletic Commission,” the story was published on June 23. You can read it HERE.

Hauser also finished first in the category of “Investigative Reporting” for “The Death of Ardi Ndembo,” a story that ran in the (London) Guardian. (Note: Hauser has owned this category. This is his 11^th first place finish for “Investigative Reporting”.)

Thomas Hauser, who entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the class of 2019, was honored at last year’s BWAA awards dinner with the A.J. Leibling Award for Outstanding Boxing Writing. The list of previous winners includes such noted authors as W.C. Heinz, Budd Schulberg, Pete Hamill, and George Plimpton, to name just a few.

The Leibling Award is now issued intermittently. The most recent honorees prior to Hauser were Joyce Carol Oates (2015) and Randy Roberts (2019).

Roberts, a Distinguished Professor of History at Purdue University, was tabbed to write the Hauser/Leibling Award story for the glossy magazine for BWAA members published in conjunction with the organization’s annual banquet. Regarding Hauser’s most well-known book, his Muhammad Ali biography, Roberts wrote, “It is nearly impossible to overestimate the importance of the book to our understanding of Ali and his times.” An earlier book by Hauser, “The Black Lights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing,” garnered this accolade: “Anyone who wants to understand boxing today should begin by reading ‘The Black Lights’.”

A panel of six judges determined the Bernie Award winners for stories published in 2024. The stories they evaluated were stripped of their bylines and other identifying marks including the publication or website for which the story was written.

Other winners:

Boxing Event Coverage: Tris Dixon

Boxing Column: Kieran Mulvaney

Boxing Feature (Over 1,500 Words): Lance Pugmire

Boxing Feature (Under 1,500 Words): Chris Mannix

The Dixon, Mulvaney, and Pugmire stories appeared in Boxing Scene; the Mannix story in Sports Illustrated.

The Bernie Award recipients will be honored at the forthcoming BWAA dinner on April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in the heart of Times Square. (For more information, visit the BWAA website). Two days after the dinner, an historic boxing tripleheader will be held in Times Square, the logistics of which should be quite interesting. Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney, and Teofimo Lopez share top billing.

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Mekhrubon Sanginov, whose Heroism Nearly Proved Fatal, Returns on Saturday

Published

4 days ago

April 15, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Mekhrubon-Sanginov-whose-Heroism-Nearly-Proved-Fatal-Returns-on-Saturday

To say that Mekhrubon Sanginov is excited to resume his boxing career would be a great understatement. Sanginov, ranked #9 by the WBA at 154 pounds before his hiatus, last fought on July 8, 2022.

He was in great form before his extended leave, having scored four straight fast knockouts, advancing his record to 13-0-1. Had he remained in Las Vegas, where he had settled after his fifth pro fight, his career may have continued on an upward trajectory, but a trip to his hometown of Dushanbe, Tajikistan, turned everything haywire. A run-in with a knife-wielding bully nearly cost him his life, stalling his career for nearly three full years.

Sanginov was exiting a restaurant in Dushanbe when he saw a man, plainly intoxicated, harassing another man, an innocent bystander. Mekhrubon intervened and was stabbed several times with a long knife. One of the puncture wounds came perilously close to puncturing his heart.

“After he stabbed me, I ran after him and hit him and caught him to hold for the police,” recollects Sanginov. “There was a lot of confusion when the police arrived. At first, the police were not certain what had happened.

“By the time I got to the hospital, I had lost two liters of blood, or so I was told. After I was patched up, one of the surgeons said to me, ‘Give thanks to God because he gave you a second life.’ It is like I was born a second time.”

“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have happened in any city,” he adds. (A story about the incident on another boxing site elicited this comment from a reader: “Good man right there. World would be a better place if more folk were willing to step up when it counts.”)

Sanginov first laced on a pair of gloves at age 10 and was purportedly 105-14 as an amateur. Growing up, the boxer he most admired was Roberto Duran. “Muhammad Ali will always be the greatest and [Marvin] Hagler was great too, but Duran was always my favorite,” he says.

During his absence from the ring, Sanginov married a girl from Tajikistan and became a father. His son Makhmud was born in Las Vegas and has dual citizenship. “Ideally,” he says, “I would like to have three more children. Two more boys and the last one a daughter.”

He also put on a great deal of weight. When he returned to the gym, his trainer Bones Adams was looking at a cruiserweight. But gradually the weight came off – “I had to give up one of my hobbies; I love to eat,” he says – and he will be resuming his career at 154. “Although I am the same weight as before, I feel stronger now. Before I was more of a boy, now I am a full-grown man,” says Sanginov who turned 29 in February.

He has a lot of rust to shed. Because of all those early knockouts, he has answered the bell for only eight rounds in the last four years. Concordantly, his comeback fight on Saturday could be described as a soft re-awakening. Sanginov’s opponent Mahonri Montes, an 18-year pro from Mexico, has a decent record (36-10-2, 25 KOs) but has been relatively inactive and is only 1-3-1 in his last five. Their match at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, California, is slated for eight rounds.

On May 10, Ardreal Holmes (17-0) faces Erickson Lubin (26-2) on a ProBox card in Kissimmee, Florida. It’s an IBF super welterweight title eliminator, meaning that the winner (in theory) will proceed directly to a world title fight.

Sanginov will be watching closely. He and Holmes were scheduled to meet in March of 2022 in the main event of a ShoBox card on Showtime. That match fell out when Sanginov suffered an ankle injury in sparring.

If not for a twist of fate, that may have been Mekhrubon Sanginov in that IBF eliminator, rather than Ardreal Holmes. We will never know, but one thing we do know is that Mekhrubon’s world title aspirations were too strong to be ruined by a knife-wielding bully.

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