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

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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Floyd Mayweather has Another Phenom and his name is Curmel Moton

Floyd Mayweather has Another Phenom and his name is Curmel Moton
In any endeavor, the defining feature of a phenom is his youth. Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Bryce Harper was a phenom. He was on the radar screen of baseball’s most powerful player agents when he was 14 years old.
Curmel Moton, who turns 19 in June, is a phenom. Of all the young boxing stars out there, wrote James Slater in July of last year, “Curmel Moton is the one to get most excited about.”
Moton was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. His father Curtis Moton, a barber by trade, was a big boxing fan and specifically a big fan of Floyd Mayweather Jr. When Curmel was six, Curtis packed up his wife (Curmel’s stepmom) and his son and moved to Las Vegas. Curtis wanted his son to get involved in boxing and there was no better place to develop one’s latent talents than in Las Vegas where many of the sport’s top practitioners came to train.
Many father-son relationships have been ruined, or at least frayed, by a father’s unrealistic expectations for his son, but when it came to boxing, the boy was a natural and he felt right at home in the gym.
The gym the Motons patronized was the Mayweather Boxing Club. Curtis took his son there in hopes of catching the eye of the proprietor. “Floyd would occasionally drop by the gym and I was there so often that he came to recognize me,” says Curmel. What he fails to add is that the trainers there had Floyd’s ear. “This kid is special,” they told him.
It costs a great deal of money for a kid to travel around the country competing in a slew of amateur boxing tournaments. Only a few have the luxury of a sponsor. For the vast majority, fund raisers such as car washes keep the wheels greased.
Floyd Mayweather stepped in with the financial backing needed for the Motons to canvas the country in tournaments. As an amateur, Curmel was — take your pick — 156-7 or 144-6 or 61-3 (the latter figure from boxrec). Regardless, at virtually every tournament at which he appeared, Curmel Moton was the cock of the walk.
Before the pandemic, Floyd Mayweather Jr had a stable of boxers he promoted under the banner of “The Money Team.” In talking about his boxers, Floyd was understated with one glaring exception – Gervonta “Tank” Davis, now one of boxing’s top earners.
When Floyd took to praising Curmel Moton with the same effusive language, folks stood up and took notice.
Curmel made his pro debut on Sept. 30, 2023, at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on the undercard of the super middleweight title fight between Canelo Alvarez and Jermell Charlo. After stopping his opponent in the opening round, he addressed a flock of reporters in the media room with Floyd standing at his side. “I felt ready,” he said, “I knew I had Floyd behind me. He believes in me. I had the utmost confidence going into the fight. And I went in there and did what I do.”
Floyd ventured the opinion that Curmel was already a better fighter than Leigh Wood, the reigning WBA world featherweight champion who would successfully defend his belt the following week.
Moton’s boxing style has been described as a blend of Floyd Mayweather and Tank Davis. “I grew up watching Floyd, so it’s natural I have some similarities to him,” says Curmel who sparred with Tank in late November of 2021 as Davis was preparing for his match with Isaac “Pitbull” Cruz. Curmell says he did okay. He was then 15 years old and still in school; he dropped out as soon as he reached the age of 16.
Curmel is now 7-0 with six KOs, four coming in the opening round. He pitched an 8-round shutout the only time he was taken the distance. It’s not yet official, but he returns to the ring on May 31 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas where Caleb Plant and Jermall Charlo are co-featured in matches conceived as tune-ups for a fall showdown. The fight card will reportedly be free for Amazon Prime Video subscribers.
Curmel’s presumptive opponent is Renny Viamonte, a 28-year-old Las Vegas-based Cuban with a 4-1-1 (2) record. It will be Curmel’s first professional fight with Kofi Jantuah the chief voice in his corner. A two-time world title challenger who began his career in his native Ghana, the 50-year-old Jantuah has worked almost exclusively with amateurs, a recent exception being Mikaela Mayer.
It would seem that the phenom needs a tougher opponent than Viamonte at this stage of his career. However, the match is intriguing in one regard. Viamonte is lanky. Listed at 5-foot-11, he will have a seven-inch height advantage.
Keeping his weight down has already been problematic for Moton. He tipped the scales at 128 ½ for his most recent fight. His May 31 bout, he says, will be contested at 135 and down the road it’s reasonable to think he will blossom into a welterweight. And with each bump up in weight, his short stature will theoretically be more of a handicap.
For fun, we asked Moton to name the top fighter on his pound-for-pound list. “[Oleksandr] Usyk is number one right now,” he said without hesitation,” great footwork, but guys like Canelo, Crawford, Inoue, and Bivol are right there.”
It’s notable that there isn’t a young gun on that list. Usyk is 38, a year older than Crawford; Inoue is the pup at age 32.
Moton anticipates that his name will appear on pound-for-pound lists within the next two or three years. True, history is replete with examples of phenoms who flamed out early, but we wouldn’t bet against it.
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Arne’s Almanac: The First Boxing Writers Assoc. of America Dinner Was Quite the Shindig

The first annual dinner of the Boxing Writers Association of America was staged on April 25, 1926 in the grand ballroom of New York’s Hotel Astor, an edifice that rivaled the original Waldorf Astoria as the swankiest hotel in the city. Back then, the organization was known as the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York.
The ballroom was configured to hold 1200 for the banquet which was reportedly oversubscribed. Among those listed as agreeing to attend were the governors of six states (New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Maryland) and the mayors of 10 of America’s largest cities.
In 1926, radio was in its infancy and the digital age was decades away (and inconceivable). So, every journalist who regularly covered boxing was a newspaper and/or magazine writer, editor, or cartoonist. And at this juncture in American history, there were plenty of outlets for someone who wanted to pursue a career as a sportswriter and had the requisite skills to get hired.
The following papers were represented at the inaugural boxing writers’ dinner:
New York Times
New York News
New York World
New York Sun
New York Journal
New York Post
New York Mirror
New York Telegram
New York Graphic
New York Herald Tribune
Brooklyn Eagle
Brooklyn Times
Brooklyn Standard Union
Brooklyn Citizen
Bronx Home News
This isn’t a complete list because a few of these papers, notably the New York World and the New York Journal, had strong afternoon editions that functioned as independent papers. Plus, scribes from both big national wire services (Associated Press and UPI) attended the banquet and there were undoubtedly a smattering of scribes from papers in New Jersey and Connecticut.
Back then, the event’s organizer Nat Fleischer, sports editor of the New York Telegram and the driving force behind The Ring magazine, had little choice but to limit the journalistic component of the gathering to writers in the New York metropolitan area. There wasn’t a ballroom big enough to accommodate a good-sized response if he had extended the welcome to every boxing writer in North America.
The keynote speaker at the inaugural dinner was New York’s charismatic Jazz Age mayor James J. “Jimmy” Walker, architect of the transformative Walker Law of 1920 which ushered in a new era of boxing in the Empire State with a template that would guide reformers in many other jurisdictions.
Prizefighting was then associated with hooligans. In his speech, Mayor Walker promised to rid the sport of their ilk. “Boxing, as you know, is closest to my heart,” said hizzoner. “So I tell you the police force is behind you against those who would besmirch or injure boxing. Rowdyism doesn’t belong in this town or in your game.” (In 1945, Walker would be the recipient of the Edward J. Neil Memorial Award given for meritorious service to the sport. The oldest of the BWAA awards, the previous recipients were all active or former boxers. The award, no longer issued under that title, was named for an Associated Press sportswriter and war correspondent who died from shrapnel wounds covering the Spanish Civil War.)
Another speaker was well-traveled sportswriter Wilbur Wood, then affiliated with the Brooklyn Citizen. He told the assembly that the aim of the organization was two-fold: to help defend the game against its detractors and to promote harmony among the various factions.
Of course, the 1926 dinner wouldn’t have been as well-attended without the entertainment. According to press dispatches, Broadway stars and performers from some of the city’s top nightclubs would be there to regale the attendees. Among the names bandied about were vaudeville superstars Sophie Tucker and Jimmy Durante, the latter of whom would appear with his trio, Durante, (Lou) Clayton, and (Eddie) Jackson.
There was a contraction of New York newspapers during the Great Depression. Although empirical evidence is lacking, the inaugural boxing writers dinner was likely the largest of its kind. Fifteen years later, in 1941, the event drew “more than 200” according to a news report. There was no mention of entertainment.
In 1950, for the first time, the annual dinner was opened to the public. For $25, a civilian could get a meal and mingle with some of his favorite fighters. Sugar Ray Robinson was the Edward J. Neil Award winner that year, honored for his ring exploits and for donating his purse from the Charlie Fusari fight to the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund.
There was no formal announcement when the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York was re-christened the Boxing Writers Association of America, but by the late 1940s reporters were referencing the annual event as simply the boxing writers dinner. By then, it had become traditional to hold the annual affair in January, a practice discontinued after 1971.
The winnowing of New York’s newspaper herd plus competing banquets in other parts of the country forced Nat Fleischer’s baby to adapt. And more adaptations will be necessary in the immediate future as the future of the BWAA, as it currently exists, is threatened by new technologies. If the forthcoming BWAA dinner (April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in mid-Manhattan) were restricted to wordsmiths from the traditional print media, the gathering would be too small to cover the nut and the congregants would be drawn disproportionately from the geriatric class.
Some of those adaptations have already started. Last year, Las Vegas resident Sean Zittel, a recent UNLV graduate, had the distinction of becoming the first videographer welcomed into the BWAA. With more and more people getting their news from sound bites, rather than the written word, the videographer serves an important function.
The reporters who conducted interviews with pen and paper have gone the way of the dodo bird and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A taped interview for a “talkie” has more integrity than a story culled from a paper and pen interview because it is unfiltered. Many years ago, some reporters, after interviewing the great Joe Louis, put words in his mouth that made him seem like a dullard, words consistent with the Sambo stereotype. In other instances, the language of some athletes was reconstructed to the point where the reader would think the athlete had a second job as an English professor.
The content created by videographers is free from that bias. More of them will inevitably join the BWAA and similar organizations in the future.
Photo: Nat Fleischer is flanked by Sugar Ray Robinson and Tony Zale at the 1947 boxing writers dinner.
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Gabriela Fundora KOs Marilyn Badillo and Perez Upsets Conwell in Oceanside

It was just a numbers game for Gabriela Fundora and despite Mexico’s Marilyn Badillo’s elusive tactics it took the champion one punch to end the fight and retain her undisputed flyweight world title by knockout on Saturday.
Will it be her last flyweight defense?
Though Fundora (16-0, 8 KOs) fired dozens of misses, a single punch found Badillo (19-1-1, 3 KOs) and ended her undefeated career and first attempt at a world title at the Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, California.
Fundora, however, proves unbeatable at flyweight.
The champion entered the arena as the headliner for the Golden Boy Promotion show and stepped through the ropes with every physical advantage possible, including power.
Mexico’s Badillo was a midget compared to Fundora but proved to be as elusive as a butterfly in a menagerie for the first six rounds. As the six-inch taller Fundora connected on one punch for every dozen thrown, that single punch was a deadly reminder.
Badillo tried ducking low and slipping to the left while countering with slashing uppercuts, she found little success. She did find the body a solid target but the blows proved to be useless. And when Badillo clinched, that proved more erroneous as Fundora belted her rapidly during the tie-ups.
“She was kind of doing her ducking thing,” said Fundora describing Badillo’s defensive tactics. “I just put the pressure on. It was just like a train. We didn’t give her that break.”
The Mexican fighter tried valiantly with various maneuvers. None proved even slightly successful. Fundora remained poised and under control as she stalked the challenger.
In the seventh round Badillo seemed to take a stand and try to slug it out with Fundora. She quickly was lit up by rapid left crosses and down she went at 1:44 of the seventh round. The Mexican fighter’s corner wisely waved off the fight and referee Rudy Barragan stopped the fight and held the dazed Badillo upright.
Once again Fundora remained champion by knockout. The only question now is will she move up to super flyweight or bantamweight to challenge the bigger girls.
Perez Beats Conwell.
Mexico’s Jorge “Chino” Perez (33-4, 26 KOs) upset Charles Conwell (21-1, 15 KOs) to win by split decision after 12 rounds in their super welterweight showdown.
It was a match that paired two hard-hitting fighters whose ledgers brimmed with knockouts, but neither was able to score a knockdown against each other.
Neither fighter moved backward. It was full steam ahead with Conwell proving successful to the body and head with left hooks and Perez connecting with rights to the head and body. It was difficult to differentiate the winner.
Though Conwell seemed to be the superior defensive fighter and more accurate, two judges preferred Perez’s busier style. They gave the fight to Perez by 115-113 scores with the dissenter favoring Conwell by the same margin.
It was Conwell’s first pro loss. Maybe it will open doors for more opportunities.
Other Bouts
Tristan Kalkreuth (15-1) managed to pass a serious heat check by unanimous decision against former contender Felix Valera (24-8) after a 10-round back-and-forth heavyweight fight.
It was very close.
Kalkreuth is one of those fighters that possess all the physical tools including youth and size but never seems to be able to show it. Once again he edged past another foe but at least this time he faced an experienced fighter in Valera.
Valera had his moments especially in the middle of the 10-round fight but slowed down during the last three rounds.
One major asset for Kalkreuth was his chin. He got caught but still motored past the clever Valera. After 10 rounds two judges saw it 99-91 and one other judge 97-93 all for Kalkreuth.
Highly-rated prospect Ruslan Abdullaev (2-0) blasted past dangerous Jino Rodrigo (13- 5-2) in an eight round super lightweight fight. He nearly stopped the very tough Rodrigo in the last two rounds and won by unanimous decision.
Abdullaev is trained by Joel and Antonio Diaz in Indio.
Bakersfield prospect Joel Iriarte (7-0, 7 KOs) needed only 1:44 to knock out Puerto Rico’s Marcos Jimenez (25-12) in a welterweight bout.
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