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COMMISSIONER’S CORNER: Talking Judges For Canelo-Lara, Toledo’s Majesty, More

This Saturday is an all-important Jr. Middleweight showdown in Las Vegas between Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Erislandy Lara. There has been so much talk about this fight going to a decision and that Alvarez—being promoter Golden Boy’s top attraction—will win if this fight goes to the scorecards. I don’t buy it.
Sure, many of the worst decisions in boxing history—or in the the 40 years, anyway—have taken place in Sin City. Well, when you have more title fights than anywhere else, you are bound to have the most controversial endings…and scores…and judges who differ.
Let’s try to understand—and believe—that judges don’t see every round exactly the same. Especially close rounds. Especially competitive rounds. Especially two-sided rounds. At the end of a competitive, closely-contested round, two of the three judges will score the round in favor of “Fighter A.” The other judge will score it for “Fighter B.” In a close fight, just one of those rounds, coupled with an even round, can mean a swing the other way in the official tabulation.
Judges can be found in two categories: Competent and Honest. Some judges are highly-competent. Some are not. Most are honest. Some are not. In my years as head of the New York State Athletic Commission, I licensed and worked with some highly-competent officials, among them Julie Lederman, Steve Weisfeld, Don Ackerman, Billy Costello, Ron McNair and Melvina Lathan. It was a no-brainer for me to hand them the bigger, more lucrative and visible fights. There were also judges whose work almost scared me. I always felt they guessed at close rounds. Their body of work usually had them constantly on the short end of a split decision. To them, I never assigned highly-visible fights and important fights. In other matches, I always teamed them with two of my “A” judges, knowing at least two of them will get the score correct. Of course, if they were THAT bad, I retired their judging license.
While I did find competence, incompetence and honesty, the one thing I never found was dishonesty in any official—be it a judge or a referee. Had I uncovered such a dishonest official, I would have publically excoriated him/her.
On Saturday night, fight fans don’t have to worry about who Bob Bennett, the new Executive Director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, has assigned to work the Canelo Alvarez-Erislandy Lara fight. They are all well-known veterans with sterling resumes. The referee is Robert Byrd. The judges are Jerry Roth (Nevada), Dave Moretti (Nevada) and Levi Martinez (New Mexico). As far as Bob Bennett is concerned, no Nevada official will dare do anything except follow the rules. Mr. Bennett is a retired former Special Prosecutor for the FBI.
So, on Saturday, sit back and enjoy the fight card (if you have elected to buy the PPV showing). If Alvarez-Lara goes the distance, know that the decision—even though it may not be one you agree with, is an honest one.
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OVER/UNDER: Golden Boy’s Oscar de la Hoya said he believes the Alvarez-Lara PPV telecast will surpass 1 million. What’s the betting line here? I say 750,000. Will it go over that number or fall short of that number? I say it falls short. This is a fight which belongs of free TV.
AROUND THE RING: You know him as the color analyst on the fights seen on the NBC Sports Network, the man alongside veteran blow-by-blow announcer Kenny Rice. His name is BJ Flores, and he is a Top 10-rated professional cruiserweight who lives in Arizona. Flores’ has been fighting as a pro since 2003. In November, 2010, Flores took a 24-0 record to Australia, where he faced Danny Green for the IBO Cruiserweight Title. After 12 rounds, Green was awarded a unanimous decision. Following that fight, Flores fought twice in 2011 and twice more in 2012, winning all four fights. Then, concentrating on his announcing career, Flores was inactive in 2013. Always in the gym, even when on the road, Flores returned to action last May 10, stopping Adam Collins in the first round on the undercard to Bermane Stiverne’s KO 6 of Cris Arreola at USC’s Galen Center. He returned to action a little over one month later, winning an eight-round decision against Anthony Smith in Las Vegas. His fight was part of a card which featured some of the best young fighters in the world, including light heavyweight Marcus Browne, welterweight Errol Spence and heavyweight Gerald Washington. There is now talk of Flores taking his 30-1-1 record and challenging 42-year-old WBA Cruiserweight Champion Guillermo Jones. GJ vs BJ…Former light heavyweight champ Eddie Mustafa Muhammad is recovering nicely from back surgery and is up and around his home and gym in Las Vegas…Danny Jacobs is training hard in Easton, PA for his August 9 fight for the vacant WBA Middleweight Title against Australia’s Jarrod “Left Jab” Fletcher. Jacobs’ main sparring partner for the bout, which will take place at the Barclay’s Center, is hard-hitting Brooklyn middleweight Curtis Stevens. For the past few weeks, Jacobs has been having training sessions behind closed doors. No visitors or media. Except one: Larry Holmes. Why only the former heavyweight champ? “He owns the town,” Jacobs says with a laugh…Speaking of training, both Gennady Golovkin and Daniel Geale have been looking tremendous in their respective training camps as they head towards their July 26 showdown at Madison Square Garden. A heavyweight matchup on the GGG-Geale undercard is one the boxing world has its eyes on. The fight is between Bryant Jennings and Mike Perez. The two unbeatens will face each other over 12 rounds. Jennings who is 18-0, is coming off an impressive 10th round stoppage of previously unbeaten Artur Spilka in January. Also that month, Perez, who is 20-0, was just two months off his brutal victory over Magomed Abdusalamov, labored his way to a majority decision over Carlos Takam. Reports say both fighters are in prime condition, but a source in the Perez camp says he frequently goes into trance-like lapses during sparring sessions, as if his head is somewhere else, something he never did before in his previous 20 fights. Ya’ gotta’ just wonder which Perez will show up on the night of the fight…Bob Arum has offered Chris Algieri $1 million to face Manny Pacquiao this Fall in Macau, China. Our Radam calls it an early Thanksgiving Turkey for Pacquiao. Hmm. In reality, it could be an early Christmas present for Algieri.
STILL DREAMING: He was once among the most feared punchers in the sport. He was also a world champion. He is Jeff “Left Hook” Lacy, the former super middleweight champ. He took his world title and a 22-0–1 record into a bout against Joe Calzaghe in 2006 and dropped a one-sided decision to the future Hall-of-Famer. Over the next four years he went 4-3, losing to Jermain Taylor, Roy Jones and clubfighter Dhafir Smith. Following the loss to Smith, Lacy hung up the gloves. As we well know, boxing retirements are usually temporary. Lacy’s lasted three years. He returned with a third-round knockout win last November over Martin Verdin. Now, Lacy has moved to light heavyweight and says he is better than ever and seeks a shot at one of the light heavyweight titles. On Thursday night in Miami, he faced Cuban transplant Umberto Savigne, who is 12-1. Although I was afraid for Jeff Lacy, feeling he has taken too much punishment for his 37 years, Savigne, while hard-hitting (he has nine stoppages in his 12 wins), was dropped and almost beaten by Dhafir Smith, the same Dhafir Smith who thoroughly outboxed Lacy in 2010. Should Lacy have won, perhaps landing one of his vaunted hooks on the questionable chin of Savigne, he’d have been looking for a big name next. Instead, there will be pressure to exit the sport. He was smashed by Savigne (TKO2).
CALLING OUT THE OPPOSITION: Unbeaten female fighter Shelly “Shallito’s Way” Vincent has called out Heather Hardy. Both are unbeaten and both are attracting lots of media attention. Hardy, 11-0, is out of New York, while Vincent is from two-and-a-half hours North, from Groton, CT. Hardy fights in her hometown, while Vincent, 12-0, has found a home at the Foxwoods Casino. Last week, after winning a decision at Foxwoods, Vincent was a guest on my SiriusXM show. She held nothing back as she called out Hardy.
“I’ll fight her in Foxwoods, I’ll fight her in New York,” said Hardy. “But I know she’ll never leave the New York area to fight. Me, I don’t care. I just want a ring and Hardy in it.” Asked if she’d be worried about the “hometown decision,” Hardy said, “not at all.” The she added, “That’s because the judges won’t be needed. All we’ll need is a ref to count over her horizontal body!”
We’re waiting for an answer from Hardy.
While Vincent tempered her remarks about Hardy, heavyweight contender Tyson Fury held nothing back about both Wladimir Klitschko and Deontay Wilder, while a guest on my show. “Wladimir is a —-y,” said Fury. He fights nobodies and then grabs them and holds them. He is the world clinching champion! I will knock him out, because I have no fear of him. As for Deontay Wilder, it looks to the public like he can punch. But who is he hitting? Stiffs! Bums! Nobodies! He’s also a —-y. I will knock him out easier than I will knock out Klitschko.”
When told of Fury’s remarks, Wilder said, “He gets tapped and he goes down. I am going to more than tap him. I am going to knock him out cold. He talks big, but if a contract to fight me ever gets put in front of him, he will cry like a b—h not to sign it. He is 99% mouth, 1% fighter.”
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LATE RESULTS: Jr. Middleweightveteran Alfonso Gomez kept his career alive with a decision against Ed Paredes in Las Vegas. Fighting in the main event on FoxSports1, Gomez kept Paredes off-balance all-night long and coasted to a comfortable unanimous 10-round decision. The cards were 99-92, 98-92 and 96-93. Gomez was so impressive and so full of fight, that despite being dropped in the fourth and sixth rounds, he stormed back in both of those rounds to pull a 10-10 round in one of them and lose the other only by a 10-9 score on the card of judge Dave Moretti. Gomez is now 24-6-2 (14), while Paredes dropped to 35-4-1 (23)…On the undercard, 2012 U.S. Olympian Joseph Diaz Jr. went to 11-0 (7), taking a 10-round unanimous verdict over tough Ramiro Robles. Diaz’ victory upped the Olympic Teams’ overall record to 90-0.
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HOOKED ON THIS BOOK: Author Springs Toledo is brilliant. Change that. He is an absolute genius. He is Rembrandt with the written word. In “The Gods of War,” a collection of his boxing essays, Toledo begins by tying together the ends of “fifteen degrees of separation and no less than 10 International Boxing Hall of Famers connecting (Harry) Greb’s fist to my face.” That’s right. Toledo sparred with a man who fought a man who fought a man…who fought the legendary Harry Greb. Right away, you feel his love for boxing. From one of my closest friends, Alexis Arguello, to Henry Armstrong, Sugar Ray Robinson, Harry Greb, Ezzard Charles, Roberto Duran, Charley Burley, Rocky Marciano and more, Toledo will make you smile. He’ll make you laugh. He may even make you shed a tear, as I did, when I read his essay about Arguello. There are also four short, wonderful essays on the vastly-talented and just-as misunderstood Charles “Sonny” Liston entitled, “The Liston Chronicles.” Toledo even has a list of the top 30 fighters of the Modern Era. I call it the “Toledo Thirty.” Published by Tora Book Publishing, this book belongs in your den or study, prominently displayed in your “Favorites” section. Bert Sugar once told me, “At its best, there is nothing like boxing journalism.” Springs Toledo’s “The Gods of War” is indeed boxing journalism at its very best. FYI—Springs Toledo will be a guest on my SiriusXM show next Monday at 7:15pm (ET). If you have SiriusXM, check out his interview on channel 92.
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Pound-for-Pound: You’ve got under Sunday at 11:59 pm to get your PxP list of current fighters to me, so we can finally have our own official listing. If you’re holding off and waiting until you see the result of Alvarez-Lara, I understand, but with so many of you turning in your ballots already, even a super-impressive showing by either one will affect this first listing. Next month’s, perhaps, but not this one. So, if you haven’t done so yet, send me your list of the top 10 fighters in the world. All I need are the Top 10. Other vote-getters who do not make the Top 10 will be given mention.
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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

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 11th 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

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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