SAD FINAL CHAPTER FOR A GREAT ACTION HERO

Published

11 years ago

May 26, 2014

Some call boxing the “the sweet science,” which conjures images of intricate strategies and balletic movements more reminiscent of a Nuryev or a Baryshnikov than of tough guys punching for pay. And make no mistake, there are fighters whose grace and fluidity of movement hinted at or even screamed that they were actual scientists of pugilism: Willie Pep, Miguel Canto and any number of other stylistic dandies weren’t exactly nerds, but they executed a more physical version of the Big Bang Theory. Imagine, if you can, Dr. Sheldon Cooper with nimble feet, quick reflexes and a snappy jab.

There are those, however, whose claim to fame owed more to indomitable will than to extraordinary skill, to power more than prettiness. The blunt-force trauma guys come forward relentlessly, taking punishment to dish out punishment, their most memorable bouts recalled as bloody wars of attrition that bespeak the beauty that can be found even in the fiercest, most primeval of boxing battles.

Former WBC light heavyweight champion Matthew Saad Muhammad was such an acclaimed warrior, wearing down opponents in two-way action classics that left a deep impression on anyone who saw him dig inside himself to find, time and again, some last ounce of courage which marked the difference between victory and defeat.

Now Saad Muhammad, 59, is gone, having succumbed to the debilitating effects of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Saad passed away early Sunday morning in the Intensive Care Unit of Chestnut Hill Hospital, in his hometown of Philadelphia.

Funeral arrangements are pending.

“He had been battling the illiness for the last couple of years, but then he took a turn for the worse,” said a longtime friend and associate, Mustafa Ameen. “Those of us who knew him will miss him. He was a good man. Sure, he had his ups and downs – a lot of ups, and a lot of downs. But at least now he isn’t suffering any more. Hopefully, he’s in a better place, and I’d like to think that he is.”

Saad Muhammad was a first-ballot inductee into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1998, which tells the story of who and what he was more than his final won-lost record, which is a deceiving 49-16-3, with 35 knockouts. But, like many fighters who hang around too long, he was just 5-7-1 in his final 13 bouts, with four of his eight losses inside the distance coming during that span. He was by then a shell of his former greatness, and he knew it. But what’s a used-up fighter to do when he has made too many wrong choices, financial and otherwise, and has no way to earn a living but to keep putting himself in harm’s way?

“Toward the end I started losing my power,” Saad recalled in 1998, a few days before he was inducted into the IBHOF. “You can’t fight the way I did unless you got something to back it up. I couldn’t back it up any more. But you know what? I have no regrets. I was like Frank Sinatra. I did it my way.”

Well, maybe he did, at least professionally. As far as the rest of it … well, that’s another matter. Saad – abandoned as a child, homeless as a toddler and later as an adult, his $4 million fortune eroded to nothing by a profligate lifestyle and leeching entourage – surely would have done some things differently if life had afforded him a couple of discretionary do-overs.

“I was in a state of shock,” he said of the gut-wrenching decision he made in the summer of 2010 to walk into the RHD Ridge Center, Philadelphia’s largest homeless shelter. “I thought to myself, `Am I really going to go into this shelter?’ But I had to go somewhere. My money had run out. I was going hotel to hotel, bills piling up. I went into the shelter because I hoped it could help me make a change.”

It is hardly a unique situation, boxing history liberally dotted with sad stories of the rapid descent of good and even great fighters who treated their ring earnings as they were a permanently sustainable asset, like a backyard fruit tree that periodically renews its natural bounty.

By today’s exorbitant standards, Saad’s estimated $4 million fortune was more of a nice-sized molehill than a mountain. Floyd Mayweather Jr. has made 10 times that amount for a single bout. But it was significant swag for the 1970s and ’80s, and Saad admitted to living large – too large. He had a Rolls-Royce, a mink coat and a swarm of hangers-on he estimates at up to 60 people.

“I was putting my people up in hotels, buying them cars,” he said. “I would be nice to other people, help other people out, give to other people. Never once did I think, `Who’s going to take care of me when I’m broke?’ Stupid me.”

Perhaps Saad – his birth name was Maxwell Antonio Loach, although he didn’t rediscover that until he was an adult, and he won his 175-pound title when he was still known as Matthew Franklin, before his conversion to Islam – would have made more prudent choices had he not endured a childhood as harrowing as anything to be found in the pages of “Oliver Twist.” Even though boxing gave him a sense of purpose, he wandered through a lost-and-found life, seemingly a perpetual victim of circumstance.

Saad was introduced to hardship at an early age. Living with an aunt after his mother died, his childhood could have come out of a Charles Dickens novel. He was five years old, he said, the day his aunt told him to go out for a walk with an older brother, who was nearly eight.

“They just didn’t have enough money to take care of me, so they got rid of me,” Saad said. “I was so scared. Then a policeman found me at night and asked me my name. I said, `M-m-m-m-m.’ I was so scared. I was stuttering.”

The frightened child was taken to Catholic Social Services, where the nuns named him Matthew Franklin, after the saint and the thoroughfare (the Benjamin Franklin Parkway) where he had been abandoned.

“When people ask me to describe the greatest triumph of my career,” he said in 1998, “I tell them it was just surviving what I went through as a kid.”

Having been found, Matthew Franklin soon found ways to become lost again. He got into trouble early and often, some of the arguments ending in fistfights, a means of expression at which he proved to be quite adept. He was sent to reform school, where one of his teachers, whom he knew as “Mr. Carlos,” suggested he channel his pent-up rage into something useful, like boxing.

After compiling a 25-4 record as an amateur, Matt Franklin – his man-strength enhanced through work as a longshoreman before he turned pro in early 1974 – began his pro career in search of a signature style that fit both his temperament and gift for hitting hard. Following a 10-round unanimous-decision loss to Eddie Gregory (now Eddie Mustafa Muhammad) on March 11, 1977, Franklin decided that his most productive course of action was to ditch any notions of stick-and-move. He would stand and slug, and may he who came equipped with more concussive power and a higher threshold of pain have his hand raised at the end.

There have been more gifted fighters, to be sure, but by either of his professional names, Matthew Franklin or Matthew Saad Muhammad, the man would have to rank at or near the top of any list of crowd-pleasing favorites. He was at once an updated Jake La Motta and a precursor to Arturo Gatti. Anyone who purchased a ticket for one of Saad’s fights was sure to gets lots of bang for his buck. He won his 175-pound title on an eighth-round stoppage of Marvin Johnson on April 22, 1979, in Market Square Arena in Indianapolis, a virtual replay of his even-more-rousing 12th-round TKO victory over Johnson on July 26, 1977,” in Philly. But if the Johnson bouts represented Saad at his blood-and-guts best, there were other fights that rose to nearly that level, such as his 14th-round TKO of Yaqui Lopez and his fourth-round TKO of John Conteh in their second matchup.

“I was in a lot of wars,” Saad conceded in 1998. “People would see me get hit and not know how I could take the kind of shots that I took. Sometimes I don’t even know how I did it myself. It’s like God told me to get off that canvas and keep going.

“The (first) fight with Marvin Johnson had to be the fight of the century. It was like rock ’em, sock ’em robots all the way. Same thing with my fight with Yaqui Lopez and the second fight with John Conteh. It was fights like that that made me who I am.”

Lou Duva, the legendary manager and trainer who also was inducted into the IBHOF in 1998, said Saad’s constantly attacking, never-say-die approach would have made him a difficult opponent for anyone, including the best light heavyweight in the world at that time, Roy Jones Jr.

“Saad Muhammad was an outstanding fighter,” Duva said. “He’s the one guy who I think, if he were around today, could beat Jones. His style would just wear you down. It wore down a lot of good fighters, and I think it would wear Jones down.”

Told what Duva had said, Saad agreed with his assessment. “I think he’s right,” Saad said. “When I was at my best, I think I would have had a chance to beat any light heavyweight because of the way I fought. I got in trouble sometimes, but I always came right back at you.”

Not surprisingly, Saad sought to fill in the blank spaces in his life story with as much determination as he always exhibited inside the ropes. Who was he, really? Why had he been cast aside at such a young age? So he offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who could offer information as the identities of those who had deemed him expendable.

Perhaps also not surprisingly, stepping forward to put in a claim to the reward money were the aunt who had abandoned him and the older brother who had left alone on the street, crying and frightened.

It might be argued that Saad’s plunge from wealthy champion to destitution (at one point he was unemployed and owed $250,000 to the IRS in back taxes), while self-inflicted, was a desperate bid to buy a form of love to replace the family he didn’t have in his formative years, and didn’t want him even when he was around. It is a reasonable theory, although he exacerbated that situation by botching his later attempts at being a reasonably good husband and father. He was married and divorced twice, and his relationship with his children has also at times been rocky.

Speaking of rocky, Saad was up for the role of Clubber Lang in “Rocky III,” but lost out to a scowling bouncer from Chicago named Lawrence Tero – you now know him as Mr. T – because his vanity would not allow him to shave his head (Saad’s version) or because he objected to the script calling for him to lose the climactic fight to star Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Balboa character (Ameen’s version). So Saad was obliged to sit back and watch as Mr. T became an instantly recognizable figure on the big and little screens.

Nor did a proposed film of Saad’s seemingly Hollywood-friendly tale ever gain traction beyond the discussion stage. Polly Wilkinson, who was for a time Saad’s business manager, kept pitching his story to the studios, but it never found a buyer. Thus was Saad reduced to working as an itinerant roofer, a sometimes trainer of fighters, and ultimately as a homeless person.

“Anyone can fall down,” he said of his difficult decision to admit he had hit bottom. “The important thing is whether you can get back up. You have to make commitments and do the right thing.”

If that sounds like a line from a “Rocky” movie, well, so be it. It wouldn’t be the first time life has imitated art. Or is that the other way around?

Rest in peace, Saad. You fought like a man possessed every time you stepped inside the ring, and the guess here is that you left this earth the same way.

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Bernard Fernandez

The Challenge of Playing Muhammad Ali

Published

4 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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