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Only Time Will Tell If Mike Perez Is Over The Mago Tragedy
It is a fight, most would agree, that will go far in identifying one of the more credible challengers to pretty-much-undisputed heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko, with apologies to anyone foolish enough to believe that newly crowned WBC titlist Bermane Stiverne’s bejeweled belt somehow puts him on equal footing with the long-standing WBA/WBO/IBF/IBO and THE RING magazine ruler from Ukraine. No Johnny-come-lately with a shiny adornment cinched around his waist can dare to claim parity with someone who, along with his now-retired older brother, former WBC champ Vitali Klitschko, has towered over the division like the Colossus of Rhodes for what seems like forever.
On July 26 at Madison Square Garden, Cuba-born, Ireland-based southpaw Mike Perez (20-0-1, 12 KOs) takes on Philadelphia’s Bryant Jennings (18-0, 10 KOs) in the co-feature of an HBO-televised doubleheader, the other TV bout pairing WBA/IBO middleweight champ Gennady Golovkin (29-0, 26 KOs) against former IBF and WBA middleweight titlist Daniel Geale (30-2, 16 KOs), of Australia. On paper, both bouts have the potential to be exciting, action-packed affairs, with sudden, emphatic finishes inside the distance.
But while Golovkin is a near-automatic knockout machine and one of the emerging attractions in a sport thirsty for big-punching superstars, perhaps the more interesting matchup is Jennings-Perez, given the psychological baggage that Perez, 28, might or might not be carrying. The Cuban defector could be a major factor among a new wave of big men who hope to stake their claim to the top prize whenever the 38-year-old Wlad either retires on his own volition or is shoved off his throne by whomever can do so by force.
Jennings-Perez, which originally was scheduled for May 24 in Corpus Christi, Texas, until an injury to Perez’s left shoulder in sparring forced a postponement and a change of venue, is a WBC heavyweight title eliminator, the winner of which becomes the mandatory challenger to the winner of the as-of-yet unscheduled Stiverne-Deontay Wilder title bout.
But while the big picture is intriguing, of more immediate concern is the lingering question of Perez’s mental state. Is he the wrecking machine who outslugged Russia’s Magomed Abdusalamov to win a 10-round unanimous decision last Nov. 2 in Madison Square Garden Theater? Or is he the tentative fighter who seemed hesitant to let his hands go in settling for a 10-round majority draw with Carlos Takam on Jan. 18?
There is no question that being the winner of death bouts, or those ending in grievous bodily harm to the vanquished, can have an unsettling effect. Can any victorious fighter truly put the memory of a fallen foe, whose life or enjoyment of life has been taken from him by your fists, behind the locked door of suppressed memory? Or will those images linger every time he steps inside the ropes?
Without question, Perez-Abdusalamov was one of the more entertaining scraps of 2013. But it was the 6-foot, 235-pound Perez who finished with a flourish, nearly flooring Abdusalamov with a ripping right hand in the 10th round and continuing to pound him to the final bell. Perez came out ahead on all three official scorecards, by respective margins of 97-92 (twice) and 95-94.
“The toughest guy I faced. He hurt me a number of times,” Perez said in commending the valiant Abdusalamov in a postfight interview. But his celebratory mood was dampened shortly thereafter when Abdusalamov, a married father with three daughters, collapsed and had to undergo surgery at a New York hospital to remove a blood clot on his brain. Not long afterward, he suffered a stroke and was placed in a medically induced coma. Only his superb physical conditioning enabled Mago to beat the ultimate 10-count, but he will be fortunate to ever regain even the slightest semblance of a normal life.
Boxers always speak of the inherent dangers of their profession, but the possibility of death or catastrophic injury exists in many sports and, really, a lot of regular jobs. Think a left hook to the chin bears more implied consequences than a NASCAR driver crashing his car into a retaining wall at 185 mph? The most popular sports league in these United States, the NFL, only last week agreed to remove a $675 million cap on damages from thousands of concussion-related claims after a federal judge opined that the money set aside for compensatory damages to those afflicted was not nearly enough. Even NFL players have nothing on rodeo cowboys and bull-riders, one of whom, Freckles Brown, had an oft-broken body that the great sports columnist Jerry Izenberg described as “an X-ray in progress.” The construction of Hoover Dam between 1931 and ’36 resulted in the death of 96 to 112 workmen, depending on whose version of the grim statistics you choose to believe.
How a fighter holds up to the circumstances in which Perez now finds himself depends on that individual’s ability to cope. But there isn’t much question that there is bound to be some residual effect, especially when the fighter in question is someone like Perez, a sensitive soul outside of the ring who risked death himself during a dangerous boat trip while defecting from Cuba. Perez is dedicated to his Irish fiancée and his three children, so it should come as no surprise that he was badly shaken by what happened to family man Abdusalamov.
“He realizes it just as easily could have been him in the hospital,” Perez’s promoter, Tom Loeffler of K2 Promotions, said before his fighter took on Takam. “I think Mike will be OK, but it’s hard to predict. It’s understandable how it could affect you.”
Perez’s trainer, Abel Sanchez, echoed Loeffler, saying that before the Takam bout he warned his fighter that “it could be him laying next to Mago if he doesn’t take this fight seriously. Don’t go in there thinking you’re not going to hurt somebody and then get hurt yourself.”
For all his team’s admonitions, however, Perez fought without noticeable passion against pronounced underdog Takam. Although Perez came out ahead, 96-94, on one judge’s card, the other two saw it as a 95-95 standoff.
So here we are, at the kind of crossroads where other fighters — Sugar Ray Robinson, Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini, Emile Griffith and Nigel Benn, George Khalid Jones and Teon Kennedy – have stood. It will be interesting to see in which direction Perez turns against the dangerous Jennings, who is being mentioned, along with Deontay Wilder, as one of the best young heavyweight hopes America has produced in recent years.
In his 1969 autobiography, “Sugar Ray,” Robinson reflected on his June 24, 1947, welterweight title defense in Cleveland in which challenger Jimmy Doyle was pummeled so thoroughly that he died.
“The idea is to hit your opponent, to batter him if necessary,” Robinson told his collaborator, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times sports columnist Dave Anderson. “If you don’t, he’ll hit and batter you. Every so often, a boxer dies. Whenever that happens, some people like to shout that boxing should be outlawed, that it’s unnecessarily brutal. Most of the time, the shouters are politicians who know it’s an easy way to get their name in the newspapers. But an occasional death doesn’t mean a sport should be abolished. If that were the case, auto racing should be abolished. So should football.”
Robinson’s pragmatism stands in stark contrast to the recriminations felt by Mancini, whose fatal beatdown of South Korea’s Duk-Koo Kim in their WBA lightweight championship bout in 1982 made for an almost incomprehensible chain of tragedies. After Kim died, his grieving mother committed suicide by ingesting a bottle of pesticide and, not long after that, the fight’s referee, Richard Green, also took his own life.
“You tell yourself this is the business you chose,” Mancini said. “You seek answers, but you don’t always get them. Mostly, I asked myself, `Why him and not me? I’d only recently won the title. I had the opportunity to financially secure my future and, fortunately, I was able to do that. But after the fight, I lost my zest for boxing. And without that zest, that passion, I knew it was the beginning of the end for me. I was already looking to get out.”
“I think this fight will be a barometer of his future in this game,” Sanchez said of Perez the day before he was to mix it up with Takam.
If that was indeed the case, Mike Perez might be in more jeopardy than many might imagine against Jennings, whose mind and purpose, at least for now, remain uncluttered.
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Junto Nakatani’s Road to a Mega-fight plus Notes on the Best Boxers from Thailand
Junto Nakatani’s Road to a Mega-fight plus Notes on the Best Boxers from Thailand
WBC bantamweight champion Junto Nakatani, whose name now appears on several of the Top 10 pound-for-pound lists, returns to the ring on Monday. His title defense against Thailand’s Petch CP Freshmart is the grand finale of a two-day boxing festival at Tokyo’s Ariake Arena.
One of several Thai boxers sponsored by Fresh Mart, a national grocery chain, Petch, 30, was born Tasana Salapat or Thasana Saraphath, depending on the source, and is sometimes identified as Petch Sor Chitpattana (confusing, huh?) A pro since 2011, he brings a record of 76-1 with 53 TKOs.
In boxing, records are often misleading and that is especially true when referencing boxers from Thailand. And so, although Petch has record that jumps off the page, we really don’t know how good he is. Is he world class, or is he run-of-the-mill?
A closer look at his record reveals that only 20 of his wins came against opponents with winning records. Fifteen of his victims were making their pro debut. It is revealing that his lone defeat came in his lone fight outside Thailand. In December of 2018, he fought Takuma Inoue in Tokyo and lost a unanimous decision. Inoue, who was appearing in his thirteenth pro fight, won the 12-rounder by scores of 117-111 across the board.
A boxer doesn’t win 76 fights in a career in which he answers the bell for 407 rounds without being able to fight more than a little, but there’s a reason why the house fighter, Nakatani (28-0, 21 KOs) is favored by odds as high as 50/1 in the bookmaking universe. Petch may force Junto to go the distance, but even that is a longshot.
Boxers from Thailand
Four fighters from Thailand, all of whom were active in the 1990s, are listed on the 42-name Hall of Fame ballot that arrived in the mail this week. They are Sot Chitalada, Ratanopol Sor Varapin, Veeraphol Sahaprom, and Pongsaklek Wonjongham. On a year when the great Manny Pacquiao is on the ballot, leaving one less slot for the remainder, the likelihood that any of the four will turn up on the dais in Canastota at the 2025 induction ceremony is slim.
By our reckoning, two active Thai fighters have a strong chance of making it someday. The first is Srisaket Sor Rungvisai who knocked Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez from his perch at the top of the pound-for-pound rankings in one of the biggest upsets in recent memory and then destroyed him in the rematch. The noted boxing historian Matt McGrain named Sor Rungvisai (aka Wisaksil Wangek) the top super flyweight of the decade 2010-2019.
The other is Knockout CP Freshmart (aka Thammanoon Niyomstrom). True, he’s getting a bit long in the tooth for a fighter in boxing’s smallest weight class (he’s 34), but the long-reigning strawweight champion, who has never fought a match scheduled for fewer than 10 rounds, has won all 25 of his pro fights and shows no signs of slowing down. He will be back in action next month opposing Puerto Rico-born Oscar Collazo in Riyadh.
The next Thai fighter to go into the IBHOF (and it may not happen in my lifetime) will bring the number to three. Khaosai Galaxy entered the Hall with the class of 1999 and Pone Kingpetch was inducted posthumously in 2023 in the Old Timer’s category.
Nakatani (pictured)
Hailing from the southeastern Japanese city of Inabe, Junto Nakatani is the real deal. In 2023, the five-foot-eight southpaw forged the TSS Knockout of the Year at the expense of Andrew Moloney. Late in the 12th round, he landed a short left hook to the chin and the poor Aussie was unconscious before he hit the mat. In his last outing, on July 20, he went downstairs to dismiss his opponent, taking out Vincent Astrolabio with a short left to the pit of the stomach. Astrolabio went down, writhing in pain, and was unable to continue. It was all over at the 2:37 mark of the opening round.
It’s easy to see where Nakatani is headed after he takes care of business on Monday.
Currently, Japanese boxers own all four meaningful pieces of the 118-pound puzzle. Of the four, the most recognizable name other than Nakatani is that of Takuma Inoue who will be making the third defense of his WBA strap on Sunday, roughly 24 hours before Nakatani touches gloves with Petch in the very same ring. Inoue is a consensus 7/2 favorite over countryman Seiga Tsatsumi.
A unification fight between Nakatani and Takuma Inoue (20-1, 5 KOs) would be a natural. But this match, should it transpire, would be in the nature of an appetizer. A division above sits Takuma’s older brother Naoya Inoue who owns all four belts in the 122-pound weight class but, of greater relevance, is widely regarded the top pound-for-pound fighter in the world.
A match between Junto Nakatani and the baby-faced “Monster” would be a delicious pairing and the powers-that-be want it to happen.
In boxing, the best-laid plans often go awry, but there’s a good possibility that we will see Nakatani vs. Naoya Inoue in 2025. If so, that would be the grandest domestic showdown in Japanese boxing history.
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Bygone Days: Muhammad Ali at the Piano in the Lounge at the Tropicana
Bygone Days: Muhammad Ali at the Piano in the Lounge at the Tropicana
Among other things, Las Vegas in “olden days” was noted for its lounge shows. Circa 1970, for the price of two drinks, one could have caught the Ike and Tina Turner Review at the International. They performed three shows nightly, the last at 3:15 am, and they blew the doors off the joint.
The weirdest “lounge show” in Las Vegas wasn’t a late-night offering, but an impromptu duet performed in the mid-afternoon for a select standing-room audience in the lounge at the Tropicana. Sharing the piano in the Blue Room in a concert that could not have lasted much more than a minute were Muhammad Ali and world light heavyweight champion Bob Foster. The date was June 25, 1972, a Sunday.
What brought about this odd collaboration was a weigh-in, not the official weigh-in, which would happen the next day, but a dress rehearsal conducted for the benefit of news reporters and photographers and a few invited guests such as the actor Jack Palance who would serve as the color commentator alongside the legendary Mel Allen on the closed-circuit telecast. On June 27, Ali and Foster would appear in separate bouts at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Ali was pit against Jerry Quarry in a rematch of their 1970 tilt in Atlanta; Foster would be defending his title against Jerry’s younger brother, Mike Quarry.
In those days, whenever Las Vegas hosted a prizefight that was a major news story, it was customary for the contestants to arrive in town about three weeks before their fight. They held public workouts, perhaps for a nominal fee, at the hotel-casino where they were lodged.
Muhammad Ali and Bob Foster were sequestered and trained at Caesars Palace. The Quarry brothers were domiciled a few blocks away at the Tropicana.
The Trop, as the locals called it, was the last major hotel-casino on the south end of the Strip, a stretch of road, officially Highway 91, the ran for 2.2 miles. When the resort opened in 1957, it had three hundred rooms. Like similar properties along the famous Strip, it would eventually go vertical, maturing into a high-rise.
In 1959, entertainment director Lou Walters (father of Barbara) imported a lavish musical revue from Paris, the Folies Bergere. The extravaganza with its topless showgirls became embedded in the Las Vegas mystique. The show, which gave the Tropicana its identity, ran for almost 50 full years, becoming the longest-running show in Las Vegas history.
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Although the Quarry brothers were on the premises, Ali and Foster arrived at the Blue Room first. After Dr. Donald Romeo performed his perfunctory examinations, there was nothing to do but stand around and wait for the brothers to show up. It was then that Foster spied a grand piano in the corner of the room.
Taking a seat at the bench, he tinkled the keys, producing something soft and bluesy. “Move over man,” said Ali, not the sort of person to be upstaged at anything. Taking a seat alongside Foster at the piano, he banged out something that struck the untrained ear of veteran New York scribe Dick Young as boogie-woogie.
When the Quarry brothers arrived, Ali went through his usual antics, shouting epithets at Jerry Quarry as Jerry was having his blood pressure taken. “These make the best fights, when you get some white hopes and some spooks,…er, I mean some colored folks,” Young quoted Ali as saying.
This comment was greeted with a big laugh, but Jerry Quarry, renowned for his fearsome left hook, delivered a better line after Ali had stormed out. Surveying the room, he noticed several attractive young ladies, dressed provocatively. “I can see I ain’t the only hooker in here,” he said.
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The doubleheader needed good advance pub because both bouts were considered mismatches. In the first Ali-Quarry fight, Quarry suffered a terrible gash above his left eye before his corner pulled him out after three rounds. Ali was a 5/1 favorite in the rematch. Bob Foster, who would be making his tenth title defense, was an 8/1 favorite over Mike Quarry who was undefeated (35-0) but had been brought along very carefully and was still only 21 years old. (In his syndicated newspaper column, oddsmaker Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder said the odds were 200/1 against both fights going the distance, but there wasn’t a bookie in the country that would take that bet.)
The Fights
There were no surprises. It was a sad night for the Quarry clan at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
Muhammad Ali, clowning in the early rounds, took charge in the fifth and Jerry Quarry was in bad shape when the referee waived it off 19 seconds into the seventh round. In the semi-wind-up, Bob Foster retained his title in a more brutal fashion. He knocked the younger Quarry brother into dreamland with a thunderous left hook just as the fourth round was about to end. Mike Quarry lay on the canvas for a good three minutes before his handlers were able to revive him.
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In the ensuing years, the Tropicana was far less invested in boxing than many of its rivals on the Strip, but there was a wisp of activity in the mid-1980s. A noteworthy card, on June 30, 1985, saw Jimmy Paul successfully defend his world lightweight title with a 14th-round stoppage of Robin Blake. Freddie Roach, a featherweight with a big local following and former U.S. Olympic gold medalist Henry Tillman appeared on the undercard. The lead promoter of this show, which aired on a Sunday afternoon on CBS (with Southern Nevada blacked out) was the indefatigable Bob Arum who seemingly has no intention of leaving this mortal coil until he has out-lived every Las Vegas casino-resort born in the twentieth century.
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I may drive past the Tropicana in the next few hours and give it a last look, mindful that Muhammad Ali once frolicked here, however briefly. But I won’t be there for the implosion.
On Wednesday morning, Oct. 9, shortly after 2 a.m., the Tropicana, shuttered since April, will be reduced to rubble. On its grounds will rise a stadium for the soon-to-be-former Oakland A’s baseball team.
A recognized authority on the history of prizefighting and the history of American sports gambling, TSS editor-in-chief Arne K. Lang is the author of five books including “Prizefighting: An American History,” released by McFarland in 2008 and re-released in a paperback edition in 2020.
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WBA Feather Champ Nick Ball Chops Down Rugged Ronny Rios in Liverpool
In his first fight in his native Liverpool since February of 2020, Nick Ball successfully defended his WBA title with a 10th-round stoppage of SoCal veteran Ronny Rios. The five-foot-two “Wrecking Ball” was making the first defense of a world featherweight strap he won in his second stab at it, taking the belt from Raymond Ford on a split decision after previously fighting Rey Vargas to a draw in a match that many thought Ball had won.
This fight looked like it was going to be over early. Ball strafed Rios with an assortment of punches in the first two rounds, and likely came within a punch or two of ending the match in the third when he put Rios on the canvas with a short left hook and then tore after him relentlessly. But Rios, a glutton for punishment, weathered the storm and actually had some good moments in round four and five.
The brother of welterweight contender Alexis Rocha and a two-time world title challenger at 122 pounds, Rios returned to the ring in April on a ProBox card in Florida and this was his second start after being out of the ring for 28 months. He would be on the canvas twice more before the bout was halted. The punch that knocked him off his pins in round seven wasn’t a clean shot, but he would be in dire straits three rounds later when he was hammered onto the ring apron with a barrage of punches. He managed to maneuver his way back into the ring, but his corner sensibly threw in the towel when it seemed as if referee Bob Williams would let the match continue.
The official time was 2:06 of round ten. Ball improved to 21-0-1 (12 KOs). Rios, 34, declined to 34-5.
Semi-wind-up
A bout contested for a multiplicity of regional 140-pound titles produced a mild upset when Jack Rafferty wore down and eventually stopped Henry Turner whose corner pulled him out after the ninth frame.
Both fighters were undefeated coming in. Turner, now 13-1, was the better boxer and had the best of the early rounds. However, he used up a lot of energy moving side-to-side as he fought off his back foot, and Rafferty, who improved to 24-0 (15 KOs), never wavered as he continued to press forward.
The tide turned dramatically in round eight. One could see Turner’s legs getting loggy and the confidence draining from his face. The ninth round was all Rafferty. Turner was a cooked goose when Rafferty collapsed him with four unanswered body punches, but he made it to the final bell before his corner wisely pulled him out. Through the completed rounds, two of the judges had it even and the third had the vanquished Turner up by 4 points.
Other Bouts of Note
In a lightweight affair, Jadier Herrera, a highly-touted 22-year-old Cuban who had been campaigning in Dubai, advanced to 16-0 (14 KOs) with a third-round stoppage of Oliver Flores (31-6-2) a Nicaraguan southpaw making his UK debut. After two even rounds, Herrera put Flores on the deck with a left to the solar plexus. Flores spit out his mouthpiece as he lay there in obvious distress and referee Steve Gray waived the fight off as he was attempting to rise. The end came 30 seconds into round three.
In a bantamweight contest slated for 10, Liverpool’s Andrew Cain (13-1, 12 KOs) dismissed Colombia’s Lazaro Casseres at the 1:48 mark of the second round.
A stablemate and sparring partner of Nick Ball, Cain knocked Casseres to the canvas in the second round with a short uppercut and forced the stoppage later in the round when he knocked the Colombian into the ropes with a double left hook. Casseres. 27, brought an 11-1 record but had defeated only two opponents with winning records.
In a contest between super welterweights, Walter Fury pitched a 4-round shutout over Dale Arrowsmith. This was the second pro fight for the 27-year-old Fury who had his famous cousin Tyson Fury rooting him on from ringside. Stylistically, Walter resembles Tyson, but his defense is hardly as tight; he was clipped a few times.
Arrowsmith is a weekend warrior and a professional loser, a species indigenous to the British Isles. This was his twenty-fourth fight this year and his 186th pro fight overall! His record is “illuminated” by nine wins and 10 draws.
A Queensberry Promotion, the Ball vs Rios card aired in the UK on TNT Sports and in the US on ESPN+.
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