Terence Crawford, And The Curse of the ’87 Monte Carlo

Published

10 years ago

July 11, 2014

Terence Crawford will introduce himself to a broader segment of BoxingHeads when he sits in studio, during “Friday Night Fights,” and shoots the bull about the slate of fights unfolding for ESPN2 viewers, as well as his impressive win over Yuriorkis Gamboa a couple weeks ago, a scrap seen on HBO.

I was thinking I’d get a better handle on the man, what makes him tick, the who, what, when and why about the Omaha, Nebraska athlete who, some people tell me, is neck and neck with trillionaire business mogul Warren Buffett as most popular Nebraskan, on Thursday night. Top Rank set up an intimate meet ‘n greet ‘n eat in NYC, near Madison Square Garden, at a steak joint. I got there at 6:45 PM and babbled with pals Mitch Abramson, of the NY Daily News, and ace videographer Bill Emes. At 7:10 PM word dropped, sadly, that Crawford would be a no show.

This being boxing, I awaited the story. There is just about always a story when stuff like this goes down, and this one didn’t disappoint. I call it “The Curse of the ’87 Monte.”

Here’s the quick version. Crawford (24-0 with 17 KOs), who is known by all in and around Omaha as “Bud,” in honor of Rudy’s l’il pal “Bud” on “The Cosby Show,” the runaway sitcom hit from the 80s which spawned a tacky sweater craze, likes cars.

Not in the way Mayweather likes cars, though. His craving are of a saner variety.

He had his eye on a Monte Carlo, a 1987 edition, meaningful to him because he was born that year. He tracked one down. Co-manager Brian McIntyre told me he think he found it on Ebay. With some of the same focus he used to bear down on Gamboa, enroute to a KO9 win, Crawford traveled to Illinois to pick up the auto.

“He told me he was going, and I said, ‘Just make sure you get to the airport on time,’ McIntyre told me.

“I will,” Crawford, the 26-year-old WBO 140 pound champ, assured Mac, who helps train him.

Indeed, he had the best intentions, knowing he needed to make this media gathering in NYC, and then make the short air trek to CT., to make it to Bristol to make the rounds before the FNF hit. Then Johnny Law hit Crawford with a sneaky-quick combo. Crawford’s pal was in the drivers’ seat, with the boxer alongside, and they were making their way to Omaha when they got pulled over.

No insurance. No cuffs, but the car was impounded, and worse yet, Crawford missed a 1 PM flight to NYC.

Mac got a call on his cell on Tuesday morning, 3 AM. “Mac, it’s me, Bud. I’m not gonna make that flight…”

“I swear to God, I thought I was dreaming,” Mac told me. “But he’s flying here now. He’ll land by 11:15, be in the hotel by midnight.”

Speaking of flying…McIntyre says Omaha is still buzzing like the water supply was dosed with MDMA. “The people are so happy. I think he’s passed Buffet in popularity,” he declared.

Everyone’s coming up to him, wanting to know when Bud’s fighting again. November 8 seems a good bet, with foe TBD. Ray Beltran is in the mix.

I guess we’ll have to check out that bout, to run on HBO, to see if there is anything to that “Curse of the Monte” concept…

You know I’m joking about the curse, though, right? Crawford’s luck has actually been pretty good since he smartened up, compliments of a bullet that didn’t finish the job. A few weeks after he went to 4-0, he found a dice game, in Omaha. One lucky night in September, of 2008. Did well in the dice game, and jetted. He was counting his moolah, in the driver’s seat of his car, when a bullet was fired through a window, into his head. The reduced velocity from the meeting with the window probably saved his life. There’s another story floating around that someone took a shot at Crawford sometimes after that, because he was mistaken for a another guy, wrong place and wrong time in a cousin vs. cousin beef. But it’s funny how your luck changes when your attitude does, when you remove yourself from the cool but shady crowd, and you get down to the boring business of sticking to a regimen of running, and boxing, and eating OK, and paying attention to your kids–two sons and a step-daughter– and such…

Mac surely doesn’t think there’s a curse, surrounding the Monte or anything. Then again, he’s biased. He told me he didn’t think a star was born in the ring on June 28, but, in fact, many years before, during a Golden Gloves event. Bud got robbed, everyone who saw his fight against a guy named Mendez said, and when they got back to the dressing room, Team Crawford was belligerent. McIntyre, who fought pro, as a heavyweight tin the 90s and 2000s, was in a throwing-furniture kind of mood. Not Bud. “He was calm,” he said. That spoke to McIntyre; it told him the kid had the disposition to remain collected, not get rattled. He said Crawford also didn’t lose his way when he didn’t get the W at the Olympic Trials, ahead of the 2008 Games, losing to Sadam Ali and Miguel Gonzalez. “He was sort of blackballed,” Mac told me, because he wasn’t good at the political side.

You can stink at politics, though, if you get ‘er done in the ring. Ace manager Cameron Dunkin really didn’t care about the personality traits of the fighter, as long as he kept on progressing as a pugilist. McIntyre, who has known the Crawford family forever, looked from coast to coast for a good co-manager for Bud, but was taken by Dunkins’ resume, so they signed a pact, without having met each other, for the record, in 2007. Crawford was with promoter TKO, and doing fine, though there was some pressure to get him to dump the old crew, move to Vegas, where he could get that superior sparring. He nixed that idea, preferring to remain true to Omaha. At 12-0, he latched on to the Top Rank train. On March 30, 2013, he commanded attention with a win over Breidis Prescott, which came on 10 days notice for the Nebraskan. Next, he took down Alejandro Sanabria in Texas, underneath a Mikey Garcia-JuanMa fight. As per usual, Bud started slow, something McIntyre says is just Crawfords’ way.

Expectations were high when Bud met Andrey Klimov Oct. 5, 2013, but the review from the UD10 win weren’t stellar. To say the least. He snagged an HBO TV slot, under Miguel Cotto-Delvin Rodriguez, but didn’t treat that with the respect it deserved. Or so said some snipers on Twitter. The boobirds chirped in the arena, in Tampa, too. HBO heard the reaction…and reacted. Guess who wasn’t asked back to the next dance? Crawford…WEALTH showed his fight against Ricky Burns, on March 1, 2104, which means a relative handful of fight fans, the hardcore, really, saw him get the UD12 over the Scottish champ in Glasgow, snagging the WBO lightweight crowd for his trouble. The reviews were much better and McIntyre probably deserves some credit. He gave Bud the what for, he says, after the Klimov fight. “We talked about it,” he said. “HBO didn’t pick up the fight, and I told him, ‘It’s because you weren’t exciting.”

A win is a win is a win…except when it isn’t…because boxing is in the entertainment realm, and if people are captivated, or at least a bit more than mildly interested in you when you fight, then you might fight opportunities to appear on big stages dwindling. Bud got it, Mac said. “The switch flipped in his head,” the co-helmer said. Which is why you saw Crawford, after a slowish start, in which he was finding his rhythm, getting his head, hands, and feet in concert, look to show a nasty side against Gamboa. The Cuban hit the mat in the fifth, the eighth, and twice in the ninth. Mac deserves a bit of credit there too, because he offered an honest assessment, after the fourth, that the rounds were close.

I told Mac I thought that if Gamboa hadn’t been off for a year, this win would have resulted in even more buzz for Bud. “Gamboa was rusty,” was the response by some unwilling to anoint Bud. And I don’t dismiss that critique. And neither did Mac. But he thinks Crawford is a pound for pound guy, right now, a top 20, maybe a top 15 sort.

Oh, and as for the Buffett vs. Crawford talk, promoter Bob Arum tried to get the moneyman to see Bud in action, and there’s talk that could happen the next time Crawford packs the joint on Omaha. I dig the notion of them getting together and chatting. I think Buffett would be impressed by the fighting talent, and the man’s modest taste as an auto buff. Floyd brags about all those Bugattis, while Bud goes batty over an ’87 Monte. I think it speaks to his growth as a human being, his sense of restraint as a consumer; indeed, in this area at least, I dare say Terence Crawford rates higher on the pound for pound list than Floyd, as a judicious hobbyist, if nothing else.

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 289: East LA, Claressa Shields and More

Published

1 day ago

July 25, 2024

David A. Avila

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 289: East LA, Claressa Shields and More

East Los Angeles has long been a haven for some of the best fighters around if you can keep them out of trouble. For every Oscar De La Hoya or Seniesa Estrada there are thousands derailed by crime, drugs or drinking.

Boxing has always been a favorite sport of East L.A. Every family has an uncle or two who boxes.

On Friday, 360 Promotions’ Omar Trinidad (15-0-1) fights Viktor Slavinskyi (15-2-1) in the main event at Commerce Casino, in Commerce, CA. UFC Fight Pass will stream the fight card.

The City of Commerce used to be part of East L.A. until 1960 when it incorporated. It’s still considered to be part of East Los Angeles, but informally.

Plenty of fighters come out of East L.A. but few make it all the way like De La Hoya and Estrada. Will Trinidad be the one?

The first world champion from East L.A. or “East Los” as some call it, was Solly Garcia Smith back in the late 1800s. Others were Richie Lemos, Art Frias and Joey Olivo. There is also 1984 Olympic gold medalist Paul Gonzalez.

Once again 360 Promotions brings its popular brand of fights to the area. On this fight card includes two female bouts. One features Roxy Verduzco (1-0) the former amateur star fighting Colleen Davis (3-1-1) in a featherweight fight.

All that action takes place on Friday.

Elite Boxing

The next day, also in East L.A., Elite Boxing stages another boxing card at Salesian High School located at 960 S. Soto Street in the Boyle Heights area of East Los Angeles.

Elite Boxing has promoted several successful boxing cards at the Catholic high school grounds. The area is saturated by many of the best eateries in Los Angeles. Don’t take my word for it. Check it out yourself and grab some of that delicious food.

Boxing has long been a favorite sport of anyone who lives in East L.A. It’s a fight town equal to Philadelphia, Brooklyn or Detroit. There’s something different about the area. For more than 100 years some of the best fighters continue to come out of its boxing gyms. Some will be performing on these club shows.

For tickets or information go to www.eliteboxingusa.com

Claressa Shields in Detroit

Speaking of fight towns, pound-for-pound best Claressa Shields who won two Olympic Gold Medals in boxing, moves up another weight division to tackle the WBC heavyweight world champion Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse on Saturday, July 27, at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, Michigan.

DAZN will stream the heavy-duty fight card.

Shields (14-0) cleaned out the super welterweight, middleweight and super middleweight divisions and now wants to add the big girls to her conquests. She will be facing Canada’s Lepage-Joanisse (7-1) who holds the WBC belt.

The last time Shields gloved up was more than a year ago when she fought Maricela Cornejo. Don’t blame Shields. She loves to fight. She loves to win. The last time Shields lost a fight was in the amateurs and that was three presidential administrations ago.

Shields doesn’t lose.

I wonder if Las Vegas even takes bets on her fights?

The only fight she may have been an underdog was against Savannah Marshall who was the last opponent to defeat her. And that was in 2012 in China. When they met as pros two years ago, Shields avenged her loss with a blistering attack.

Don’t get Shields mad.

Perhaps her toughest foe as a pro was in her pro debut when she clashed with Franchon Crews-Dezurn in Las Vegas. It was four rounds of fists and fury as the two pounded each other on the undercard of Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev in November 2016.

That was a ferocious debut for both female pugilists.

Assisting Shields on this fight card will be several intriguing male bouts. One guy you should pay special attention is Tito Mercado (15-0, 14 KOs) a super lightweight prospect from Pomona, California.

Many excellent fighters have come out of Pomona including Sugar Shane Mosley, Shane Mosley Jr., Alberto Davila and Richie Sandoval who just passed away this week.

Sandoval was best known for his 15-round war with Philadelphia’s Jeff Chandler for the bantamweight world title in 1984. Read the story by Arne K. Lang on this link: https://tss.ib.tv/boxing/featured-boxing-articles-boxing-news-videos-rankings-and-results/81467-former-world-bantamweight-champion-richie-sandoval-passes-away-at-age-63 .

Fights to Watch

Fri. UFC Fight Pass 7 p.m. Omar Trinidad (15-0-1) vs Viktor Slavinskyi (15-2-1).

Sat. ESPN+ 12:30 p.m. Joe Joyce (16-2) vs Derek Chisora (34-13).

Sat. DAZN 3 p.m. Claressa Shields (14-0) vs Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse (7-1), Michel Rivera (25-1) vs Hugo Roldan (22-2-1); Tito Mercado (15-0) vs Hector Sarmiento (21-2).

Omar Trinidad photo by Lina Baker

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Arne’s Almanac: Jake Paul and Women’s Boxing, a Curmudgeon’s Take

Published

2 days ago

July 24, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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Jake Paul can fight more than a little. The view from here is that he would make it interesting against any fringe contender in the cruiserweight division. However, Jake’s boxing acumen pales when paired against his skill as a flim-flam artist.

Jake brought a 9-1 record into last weekend’s bout with Mike Perry. As noted by boxing writer Paul Magno, Jake’s previous opponents consisted of “a You Tuber, a retired NBA star, five retired MMA stars, a part-time boxer/reality TV star, and two undersized and inactive fall-guy boxers.”

Mike Perry, a 32-year-old Floridian, was undefeated (6-0, 3 KOs) as a bare-knuckle boxer after forging a 14-8 record in UFC bouts. In pre-fight blurbs, Perry was billed as the baddest bare knuckle boxer of all time, but against Jake Paul he proved to have very unrefined skills as a conventional boxer which Team Paul undoubtedly knew all along. Perry lasted into the eighth round in a one-sided fight that could have been stopped a lot sooner.

Jake Paul is both a boxer and a promoter. As a promoter, he handles Amanda Serrano, one of the greatest female boxers in history. That makes him the person most responsible (because the buck stops with him) for the wretched mismatch in last Saturday’s co-feature, the bout between Serrano and Stevie Morgan.

Morgan, who took up boxing two years ago at age 33, brought a 14-1 record. Nicknamed the Sledgehammer, she had won 13 of her 14 wins by knockout, eight in the opening round. However, although she resides in Florida, all but one of those 13 knockouts happened in Colombia.

“We found that in Colombia there were just more opportunities for women’s boxing than in the United States,” she told a prominent boxing writer whose name we won’t mention.

The truth is that, for some folks, Colombia is the boxing equivalent of a feeder lot for livestock, a place where a boxer can go to fatten their record. The opportunities there were no greater than in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1995. It was there that Peter McNeeley prepped for his match with Mike Tyson with a 6-second knockout of professional punching bag Frankie Hines. (Six seconds? So it would be written although no one seems to have been there to witness it.)

Serrano vs Morgan was understood to be a stay-busy fight for Amanda whose rematch with Katie Taylor was postponed until November. Stevie Morgan, to her credit, answered the bell for the second round whereas others in her situation would have remained on the stool and invented an injury to rationalize it. Thirty-eight seconds later it was all over and Ms. Morgan was free to go home and use her sledgehammer to do some light dusting.

The Paul-Perry and Serrano-Morgan fights played out in a sold-out arena in Tampa before an estimated 17,000. Those without a DAZN subscription paid $64.95 for the livestream. Paul’s next promotion, where he will touch gloves with 58-year-old Mike Tyson (unless Iron Mike pulls a Joe Biden and pulls out; a capital idea) with Serrano-Taylor II the semi-main, will almost certainly rake in more money than any other boxing promotion this year.

Asked his opinion of so-called crossover boxing by a reporter for a college newspaper, the venerable boxing promoter Bob Arum said, “It’s not my bag but folks who don’t like it shouldn’t get too worked up over it because no one is stealing from anybody.” True enough, but for some of us, the phenomenon is distressing.

—

The next big women’s fight happens Saturday in Detroit where Claressa Shields seeks a world title in a third weight class against WBC heavyweight belt-holder Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse.

A two-time Olympic gold medalist, undefeated in 14 fights as a pro, Shields is very good, arguably the best female boxer of her generation which makes her, arguably, the best female boxer of all time. But turning away Lepage-Joanisse (7-1, 2 KOs) won’t elevate her stature in our eyes.

Purportedly 17-4 as an amateur, the Canadian won her title in her second crack at it. Back in August of 2017, she challenged Cancun’s Alejandra Jimenez in Cancun and was stopped in the third round. Entering the bout, Lepage-Joanisse was 3-0 as a pro and had never fought a match slated for more than four rounds.

Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse

True, on the women’s side, the heavyweight bracket is a very small pod. A sanctioning body has to make concessions to harness a sanctioning fee. Nonetheless, how absurd that a woman who had answered the bell for only 11 rounds would be deemed qualified to compete for a world title. (FYI: Alejandra Jimenez was purportedly born a man. She left the sport with a 12-0-1 record after her win over Franchon Crews Dazurn was changed to a no-contest when she tested positive for the banned steroid stanozolol.)

Following her defeat to Jimenez, Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse, now 29 years old, was out of action for six-and-a-half years. When she returned, she was still a heavyweight, but a much slender heavyweight. She carried 231 pounds for Jimenez. In her most recent bout where she captured the vacant WBC title with a split decision over Argentina’s Abril Argentina Vidal, she clocked in at 173 ¼. (On the distaff side, there’s no uniformity among the various sanctioning bodies as to what constitutes a heavyweight.)

Claressa Shields doesn’t need Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse to reinforce her credentials as a future Hall of Famer. She made the cut a long time ago.

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Former World Bantamweight Champion Richie Sandoval Passes Away at Age 63

Published

4 days ago

July 22, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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Richie Sandoval, who won the WBA and lineal bantamweight title in one of the biggest upsets of the 1980s and then, not quite two years later, suffered near-fatal injuries in a title defense, has passed away at the age of 63.

News circulated fast in the Las Vegas boxing community on Monday, July 22, the grapevine actuated by a tweet from Hall of Fame matchmaker Bruce Trampler: “Boxing and the Top Rank family lost one of our own last night in the passing of former WBA bantamweight champion Richie Sandoval. It hurts personally and professionally to know that Richie is gone at age 63. RIP campeon.”

Details are vague but the cause of death was apparently a sudden heart attack that Sandoval experienced while visiting the Southern California home of his son of the same name.

Richie Sandoval put the LA County community of Pomona, California, on the boxing map before Shane Mosley came along and gave the town a more frequently-cited mention in the sports section of the papers. He came from a fighting family. An older brother, Albert “Superfly” Sandoval, became a big draw at LA’s fabled Olympic Auditorium while building a 35-2-1 record that included a failed bid to capture Lupe Pintor’s world bantamweight title.

Richie was a member of the 1980 U.S. Olympic boxing team that was stranded when U.S. President Jimmy Carter (and many other world leaders) boycotted the event as a protest against Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan.

As a pro, Sandoval’s signature win was a 15^th-round stoppage of Jeff Chandler. They fought on April 7, 1984 in Atlantic City. Chandler was making the tenth defense of his world bantamweight title.

Despite being a heavy underdog, Sandoval dominated the fight, winning almost every round until the referee stepped in and waived it off. Chandler, who was 33-1-2 heading in and had avenged his lone defeat, never fought again.

Sandoval made two successful defenses before risking his title against Gaby Canizales on the undercard of Hagler-Mugabi in the outdoor stadium at Caesars Palace. In round seven, Sandoval, who had a hellish time making the weight, was knocked down three times and suffered a seizure as he collapsed from the third knockdown. Stretchered out of the ring, he was rushed to the hospital where doctors reduced the swelling in his brain and beat the odds to save his life. This would be Richie’s lone defeat. He finished his pro career with a record of 29-1 (17 KOs).

Bob Arum cushioned some of the pain by giving Richie a $25,000 bonus and offering him a lifetime job at Top Rank which Richie accepted. And let the record show that Arum was good to his word.

A more elaborate portrait of Richie Sandoval was published in these pages in 2017. You can check it out HERE. May he rest in peace.

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