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

Published

9 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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Michael Woods

An Ode to the Polo Grounds on the (Belated) 100th Anniversary of Dempsey-Firpo

Published

1 day ago

September 22, 2023

Arne K. Lang

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If you happen to be up in Harlem this Saturday, they are holding a little shindig at the Polo Grounds Towers Community Center in honor of the 100^th anniversary of the Dempsey-Firpo fight.

Better late than never, as they say. The centennial of this storied fight was actually September 14, a week ago Thursday. But that rubbed up against Mexican Independence Day which prompted little shindigs that would take precedence in a neighborhood where many of the inhabitants speak Spanish.

The Sept. 14, 1923 bout between heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey, the Manassa Mauler, and his Argentine challenger Luis Angel Firpo, the Wild Bull of the Pampas, was staged at the Polo Grounds. The match was slated for 15 rounds, but no one expected it would go that far. “The styles of both,” said a Brooklyn Times Union scribe in his pre-fight report, “eliminate the possibility of the affair becoming tedious.”

That proved to be an understatement. Dempsey vs. Firpo consumed only three minutes and 57 seconds of actual fighting, but the action was breathtakingly intense and the crowd, estimated at 80,000, was on its feet the whole while.

There were so many knockdowns and they came so fast that there was disagreement among ringside reporters as to the exact number. In the first round alone, Dempsey put Firpo on the canvas at least five times, if not seven, and Firpo returned the favor twice. However, it was the Argentine that scored the most memorable knockdown. With one mighty swing of his vaunted right hand, Firpo knocked Dempsey clear out of the ring, the Mauler landing head first on a table of ringside reporters and their telegraphers with his feet up in the air. The moment inspired one of the most famous paintings in sports, George Bellows “Dempsey and Firpo,” on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York since the museum opened in 1931.

Dempsey was reeling and almost out before the first round ended, but he gathered his senses and ended the contest in the next frame. His final punch, with Firpo bleeding heavily from his mouth, “lifted the Argentine giant from his feet and hurled him headlong to the floor with the crash of a mighty oak falling from great heights.” So wrote Grantland Rice.

The Polo Grounds sat in a hollow in the northern reaches of Harlem across the Harlem River from Yankee Stadium. It was the home of the New York Giants of the National League from 1891 until the franchise left for San Francisco at the end of the 1957 season. It also housed the New York Giants football team from its inception in 1925 through 1955 and in its end days, served as the temporary home of New York’s two expansion teams, the Mets and the Jets.

Professional boxing was first served up at the Polo Grounds in 1922. There were four boxing shows there in 1923 preceding Dempsey-Firpo, but these were small potatoes by comparison, notwithstanding the fact that each of the four shows included a title fight. Dempsey-Firpo was the first collaboration between Tex Rickard and Charles Stoneham who owned the controlling interest in the baseball team.

Rickard and Stoneham had a lot in common. Rickard ran gambling saloons in mining camps in Alaska and Nevada before making his mark as a boxing promoter and settling in New York where he headed up the boxing department at Madison Square Garden. Charles Stoneham was a gambler too. He made his fortune operating bucket shops, funneling his winnings into a string of thoroughbred race horses and a horse track and casino in Havana. His silent partner in many of his business ventures was purportedly the infamous Arnold Rothstein. (A so-called bucket shop was a business where people could bet on the rise and fall of stocks and other commodities like wheat and oil without taking an ownership stake in any of the companies that comprised the marketplace.)

Rickard died in 1929, opening the door to Broadway ticket scalper Mike Jacobs who supplanted Rickard as New York’s most powerful boxing promoter. Jacobs acquired the exclusive rights to stage boxing shows at both the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium. Charles Stoneham and his counterpart with the Yankees both profited when a card was held at either property.

Yankee Stadium was more modern and could accommodate a larger crowd, so Jacobs tended to pot his biggest promotions there. Joe Louis had 12 fights at Yankee Stadium, but only two at the Polo Grounds, namely his famous 1941 fight with Billy Conn and his fight later that year with Lou Nova. However, important matches continued to land at the Polo Grounds. Thirty-four boxers who would go on to be enshrined in the International Boxing Hall of Fame had one or more fights at the Polo Grounds.

—

I’m dating myself, but this reporter is among an ever-shrinking cadre of people who once sat in the grandstand of the Polo Grounds. The allurement was baseball. Although born in Brooklyn, I was a Giants fan.

I vaguely remember descending the steep iron staircase that led from the 155^th Street subway station to the ticket booths. When one exited the subway, he was on Coogan’s Bluff, named for the former Manhattan borough president who owned the land on which the stadium sat. Coogan’s Bluff became a euphemism for the Polo Grounds itself, as Chavez Ravine would become a euphemism for Dodger Stadium.

Coogan’s Bluff

The Polo Grounds had an odd, triangular-shaped configuration. The distance to both foul poles was short whereas centerfield was cavernous, the perfect playland for the wonderful Willie Mays whose range was unsurpassed. In the words of the late, great Jim Murray, Willie’s glove was where triples went to die.

When Charles Stoneham died in 1936, the ballclub passed to his son Horace Stoneham who moved the team in San Francisco and eventually sold it to local interests. Stoneham was vilified in New York for abandoning the city, but the park and surrounding neighborhood had deteriorated. The stadium was torn down in 1964 and became the site of a giant, low-income housing project, Polo Grounds Towers, a complex consisting of four 30-story buildings run by the New York City Housing Authority. The Polo Grounds Community Center is housed in Tower #2.

The Dempsey-Firpo fight was an incandescent moment in America’s Golden Era of Sports. It was a big deal in South America too. In Buenos Aires, tens of thousands of people reportedly jammed the streets around the newspaper offices to follow the progress of the fight on bulletin boards. The last boxing show at the Polo Grounds was staged on June 20, 1960. Floyd Patterson avenged his loss to Ingemar Johannson with a fifth-round stoppage. The predicted crowd of 40,000 failed to materialize. The official attendance was 31,892.

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—

Arne K. Lang is a recognized authority on the history of prizefighting and the history of American sports gambling. His latest book, titled Clash of the Little Giants: George Dixon, Terry McGovern, and the Culture of Boxing in America, 1890-1910, was released by McFarland in September, 2022.

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 253: Oscar De La Hoya Reloading in LA and More

Published

2 days ago

September 21, 2023

David A. Avila

Avila-Perspective-Chap-253-Oscar-De-La-Hoya-Reloading-in-LA-and-More

Oscar De La Hoya sat with a satisfied look inside his glittering building on Wilshire Boulevard, unveiling plans to stage a welterweight showdown between southpaw contenders next month.

Lately, the six-division world champion turned promoter from nearby East Los Angeles has attended every boxing show produced by his company Golden Boy Promotions. Big or small, the former fighter who acquired millions as a prizefighter has put full attention on expanding his boxing empire.

Golden Boy Promotions has reloaded.

On Tuesday, De La Hoya discussed plans to match Alexis Rocha with Top Rank’s Giovanni Santillan on Saturday, October 21, at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif. DAZN will stream the show.

Rocha (23-1, 15 KOs) seems to have gained his man strength. Five out of seven of his past foes have not heard the final bell. The Orange County fighter’s seek and destroy style has made him a crowd favorite throughout Southern California.

Santillan (31-0, 16 KOs) is a different kind of cat. The San Diego-based welterweight was groomed by Thompson Boxing Promotions and then aided by Top Rank. With the loss of promoter Ken Thompson who passed away earlier this year, Top Rank has taken over the reins of the crafty fighter.

Both Rocha (pictured with Oscar) and Santillan are familiar with each other through sparring.

“I feel that I’ve grown so much over time and now’s my moment, and I want to keep just banging on the door for a world title. I know that Giovani is going to be a good opponent,” said Rocha who is based in Santa Ana.

San Diego’s Santillan expressed excitement about fighting in Los Angeles.

“This isn’t the first time that I go into enemy territory,” Santillan said. “I think that I will gain the LA fan base after this fight.”

It’s the kind of fight that would have sold out the Olympic Auditorium down the street. Battles between fighters from rival towns in Southern California resulted in fights like Bobby Chacon versus Danny “Lil Red” Lopez, or East L.A.’s Ruben Navarro versus South L.A.’s Raul Rojas.

Crosstown rivalries made the Olympic Auditorium a legendary venue for decades. And the Los Angeles area has always been a hotbed for boxing talent. Always.

De La Hoya knows that and has lived it.

“As Golden Boy, we know our position, we know exactly what we have to do in order to position that fighter to get them to that world title. Alexis Rocha is knocking on the door. Giovani has an amazing opportunity. So, this is what boxing is all about,” said De La Hoya.

MarvNation

Welterweights Eduard Skavynskyi (14-0) of Ukraine and Mexico’s Alejandro Frias (14-9-2) headline the main event at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, California on Saturday Sept. 23.

This is Skavynskyi’s first time fighting in the U.S. All his previous fights were in Russia and Ukraine.

Also, co-headlining are female minimumweights Yadira Bustillos (7-1) and Katherine Lindenmuth (5-1) in a rematch set for eight rounds.

Bustillos fights out of Las Vegas and Lindenmuth is based in New Mexico and looking to avenge her loss a year ago.

For tickets and information go to: https://www.tix.com/ticket-sales/marvnation/6815/event/1344994?fbclid=paaabuvxlnjny1dafchk0wwkftjganfmww6bayhkj7autu-mhjyz8ll__ycga

Heavyweight Rematch in England

Once again, the United Kingdom presents a heavyweight show and this time a rematch between China’s Zhilei Zhang (25-1-1, 20 KOs) and England’s Joe Joyce (15-1, 14 KOs) on Saturday, Sept 23. ESPN will stream the Frank Warren boxing card from London.

Zhang stopped Joyce in the sixth round this past April. Can he do it again?

Welterweight showdown in Florida

Jessica McCaskill (12-3) and Sandy Ryan (6-1) meet for several welterweight world titles on Saturday, Sept. 23, in Orlando, Florida. DAZN will stream the Matchroom Boxing card.

Super lightweight Richardson Hitchins (16-0, 7 KOs) test top contender Jose “Chon” Zepeda (37-3, 28 KOs) in the co-main event. Conor Benn is also on the card.

Fights to Watch

Sat. ESPN+ 2 p.m. Zhilei Zhang (25-1-1) vs Joe Joyce (15-1).

Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. Jessica McCaskill (12-3) vs Sandy Ryan (6-1); Richardson Hitchins (16-0) vs Jose Zepeda (37-3).

Alexis Rocha photo credit: Golden Boy / Cris Esqueda

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Conor Benn, a Lightning Rod for Controversy, Returns to the Ring on Saturday

Published

3 days ago

September 20, 2023

Arne K. Lang

Conor-Benn-A-Lightning-Rod-for-Controversy-Returns-to-the-Ring-on-Saturday

In a surprise announcement, Matchroom honcho Eddie Hearn has announced that Conor Benn will return to the ring this Saturday on the undercard of his promotion at the Caribe Royal in Orlando, Florida. Benn (21-0, 14 KOs) is matched against Mexico’s Rodolfo Orozco who is 32-3-3 (24) and has never been stopped. The match is slated for 10 rounds at 154 pounds and will mark the first test for both fighters outside their native countries.

The main event on the Matchroom card is a 12-round contest in the super lightweight division between Richardson Hitchins (16-0, 7 KOs) and Jose Zepeda (37-3, 28 KOs). Hitchins, born in Brooklyn, represented his parents’ homeland of Haiti in the 2016 Rio Olympics where he lost his opening round match to amateur nemesis Gary Antuanne Russell. Zepeda, a 34-year-old Mexican-American southpaw, is best remembered for his 2020 rumble with Ivan Baranchyk, the runaway pick for the Fight of the Year. The chief supporting bout pits England’s Sandy Ryan against Chicago’s Jessica McCaskill with the WBA, WBC, and IBF female welterweight belts on the line. The show will be live-streamed on DAZN.

Conor Benn last fought in April of last year when he TKOed South African veteran Chris Van Heerden in the second round. He was slated to return to the ring on Oct. 8, 2022 against Chris Eubank Jr, but — as is common knowledge – that bout fell to pieces when it came out that Benn had tested positive for a banned substance identified as Clomifene, a fertility drug in women that boosts testosterone in men. Making things worse for Benn, it came out that he had tested positive on VADA-administered tests on two separate occasions spaced several weeks apart. Try as they may, promoter Eddie Hearn and his partner Kelle Sauerland were unable to sway the British Boxing Board of Control into backing off on their edict that prevented the fight from going forward; the authorities wouldn’t budge.

As noted in a story that ran on this website, the Benn-Eubank Jr implosion was a particularly infernal shipwreck. The plug wasn’t pulled until two days before the fight, by which time all 20,000 seats at London’s O2 Arena had reportedly been sold.

Conor Benn predictably insisted that he was innocent, calling it a witch-hunt. The World Boxing Council subsequently lifted its suspension of Benn, citing a report in a medical journal that showed that Clomifene could appear in one’s system via an excessive consumption of eggs. With his father Nigel, a former two-division world champion at his side, Conor argued his case on a popular British TV talk show and persuaded many to see him as a sympathetic figure, the victim of a flawed testing process.

Interest in a Benn-Eubank Jr fight dissipated when Eubank was knocked out by Liam Smith, but was then rekindled when Eubank won the rematch in a dominant fashion. Various news reports say that Hearn has begun preliminary negotiations to resurrect the fight with his eye on a date in December.

As noted by several prominent fight writers, notably Dan Rafael, Conor Benn hasn’t yet been cleared to resume his career in the UK. An independent National Anti-Doping Panel gave him the green light, but the BBBofC is appealing that decision. Promoter Frank Warren, Eddie Hearn’s chief rival, has ventured the opinion that Team Benn is disrespecting the sport by returning to the ring before the process has run its course. In rebuttal, Eddie Hearn says the Benn-Orozco fight has the blessing of the (USA) Association of Boxing Commissioners which made this determination after consulting with the BBBofC.

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