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Boyd Melson: An Atypical Fighter

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People tend to stereotype fighters. Boyd Melson is not your average fighter. Then again, he’s not your average West Point graduate or your average Jewish kid from Westchester or your average anything.

Melson’s maternal grandparents were born in Poland and were Holocaust survivors. His grandfather escaped from a train that was en route to an extermination camp and joined the Russian Army in the war against Nazi Germany. His father, who spent 26 years in the United States military, is Louisiana Creole with African-American, French, Spanish, and Cherokee roots. Boyd’s sister is an officer in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate Group. His brother is in a public health doctoral program at New York Medical College.

Melson is thoughtful, affable, and a talker. “I was raised as a black male, and I’m Jewish,” he says. “But I’m open to different religions.” Then he elaborates, saying, “Religions are the same in a lot of ways. They’re just written differently. I believe that the highest power in the world is love. I believe that God exists in every one of us, but it’s not Him or Her or It that’s making things happen. It helps us to think that someone else is responsible for what goes on because it takes the burden off of us. But we’re all responsible for what we do and who we are. Bad things can happen for no good reason or because someone planned them to happen. You can ask, ‘Why do people get cancer?’ But you can also ask, ‘Why do people do bad things to each other?’ Good things are the same way. Some good things happen by accident and some good things happen by design. Loving human beings is my identity. I take that very seriously. Everything else in my life complements that.”

Those thoughts might sound incongruous coming from a professonal fighter, particularly one who graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point. After all, the sweet science and the United States Army aren’t the first things that come to mind when the average person thinks of “love.” But they’re part of the mosaic that’s Melson’s life.

West Point was a transformative experience for him.

“I’d heard stories about plebe year at West Point and thought getting yelled at would be funny,” Melson recalls. “That lasted about ten minutes. Then shock set in. I can’t really explain what the experience was like. But in the end, West Point teaches you to believe in yourself. You learn to sift through the crap to get to your objective. You learn that, no matter how bad something is, it will pass. You develop confidence that, no matter bad things are, you’ll find a way to get to where you want to be. You learn how to handle stress with everything – I mean everything – on the line.”

As part of the West Point curriculum, all plebes (first-year cadets) are required to take a boxing class that consists of twenty 45-minute lessons. The last four classes are graded bouts. Each plebe engages in four bouts with two one-minute rounds in each contest.

The purpose of the class isn’t to teach boxing skills as much as it’s to instill mental toughness; to teach young men to face their fears and prepare them for that moment down the road in military combat when they have only themselves to rely on.

“When you’re in combat,” Melson explains, “it’s not about American freedom at that particular moment in time. It’s about you and your buddies surviving. In boxing, you’re trying to hurt someone to win, and that person is trying to hurt you. You learn to think and make decisions under stress. You train your mind to not give up before your body does. Military combat is far more serious than boxing, but some of the demands are the same.”

Melson won all four of his plebe bouts and went from there into intramural boxing. Then he joined the intercollegiate boxing team.

“Eventually,” he recalls, “word began filtering through the ranks that this crazy plebe was knocking people out.”

Melson graduated from West Point in 2003. His first assignment after matriculation was to teach plebe boxing at West Point. Then, after four-and-a-half months of artillery school, he was assigned to the U.S. Army World Class Athlete Program, which trains Army personnel to compete at the national and international level with the ultimate goal of making the United States Olympic Team. He won numerous amateur honors and was a four-time United States Army champion.

Melson stopped boxing in November 2007 after failing to qualify for the United States Olympic Team. On May 31, 2008, he completed his five-year military commitment and took a job in corporate America, selling spinal implants for Medtronic (a leader in the development and manufacture of medical devices).

The new career fit nicely with a passion that Boyd had developed over time. On June 22, 2002, toward the end of his junior year at West Point, he’d met a woman named Christan Zaccagnino at a dance club. Christan had been wheelchair-bound since age ten after breaking her neck in a diving accident.

A relationship followed. And while Boyd and Christan haven’t been romantically involved since 2009, he still describes her as his “soulmate.”

Melson’s relationship with Christan led him to become a forceful advocate for stem-cell research.

“I’ve spent the past twelve years of my life trying to help Christan walk again,” Boyd says. “And that effort has turned into a quest to get all people who’ve suffered spinal cord injuries out of their chairs. I’ve spent a lot of time educating myself on paralysis and neurology and neuroscience and stem cells so I can understand the issues.”

“The hypocrisy and ignorance that surrounds the political debate over stem-cell research is incredibly frustrating to me,” Melson continues. “People are so ignorant on the issue. To give you one example; stem cells don’t just come from abortions. Stem cells can come from umbilical cords after a baby is born. One reason I wanted to make the U.S. Olympic Team was I’d heard that, if you won a gold medal, you’d get to shake hands with the President of the United States. I had a vision of winning a gold medal, meeting George Bush at the White House, and shaking hands with him so hard that it crushed the nerves in his hand and he needed stem-cell treatment to get the function back in his hand. Would I really have done it? Probably not. But I would have wanted to. And I have a very strong grip.”

Melson left Medtronic after two years and took a job as a medical device sales representative for Johnson & Johnson. “But over time,” he says, “a sadness came over me. I couldn’t figure it out. And then I realized it was because I was no longer trying to do something amazing and different from anyone else. I wanted to do something special. That meant I wanted to box again.”

Boyd resumed training in summer 2010 and turned pro with a four-round triumph over Andrew Jones on November 20 of that year. His professional record to date is 14 wins against 1 loss and a draw with 4 knockouts. The loss came by decision in an eight-round war against Delen Parsley. Melson was on the canvas once and Parsley twice.

Melson’s primary income now comes from teaching boxing and physical conditioning classes at Equinox (a national health club) and training a handful of private clients. He donates his fight purses to justadollarplease.org, a non-profit organization that raises funds for research at The Spinal Cord Injury Project at the W. M. Keck Center for Collaborative Neuroscience (affiliated with Rutgers University). In addition, Boyd and Christan have co-founded Team Fight to Walk, a 501(c)(3) corporation that raises money for Just A Dollar Please and will continue to support other research ventures after the clinical trials at Rutgers are complete.

“When Christopher Reeve died, we lost our celebrity,” Melson says. “I’m fighting to get attention, but not for myself. It’s for the cause.”

What sort of a future does Melson have in boxing?

He’s a 32-year-old southpaw without much power who gets hit too much.

“I don’t see him cracking the top ten in any legitimate rankings,” Showtime boxing analyst Steve Farhood says. “But he’s a great guy. And for his own sense of competitiveness, I hope he gets the chance to test himself at least once in the bigtime.”

Ron Katz, one of the savviest matchmakers in the business, is in accord and adds, “Very few people are blessed with the physical gifts you need to be a great fighter. Boyd doesn’t have those gifts. But he enjoys boxing. He does the best he can with what he has and gives it his all. There are far more talented fighters out there who don’t bring honor to the sport the way Boyd does.”

“I’m boxing because there’s so much that I love about it,” Melson says. “I love the the physical and the intellectual competition, the me versus you. It’s competition in its most basic form. You have to be willing to suffer in training to get to where you want to be. You have to be a masochist to do what you have to do. You have to be cruel to yourself to be a fighter. If you’re not pushing yourself to misery, you’re not preparing yourself properly.”

“For me, there’s always that moment in the dressing room before a fight when they bring the gloves in. I say to myself, ‘I must be crazy; I’m never doing this again.’ But at the same time, I want to get in the ring so I can make happen what I want to happen. Then I get in the ring. My adrenalin is flowing. I know I’m going to get hurt; it’s just a question of how much. I get hit in the face. And unless it’s on the nose or in the eye, it feels like pressure, that’s all. Getting hit on the back of the head hurts. Getting hit in the throat, sometimes I can’t breathe. All body shots hurt.”

And what goes through Melson’s mind when he hits someone?

“I hope I hurt him. In the military, very often, you’re trying to kill people. In boxing – let’s be honest about this – you’re trying to hurt people. Before the world was civilized, we were here to survive and procreate. Boxing brings you back to that. To survive, you conquer. But in both disciplines – military combat and boxing – you rely on brotherhood and you’re surrounded by love. You can only tap in to a certain level with anger, and then it runs dry. You can tap in deeper with love.”

Would Melson be boxing if he’d been deployed in the military and seen combat?

“I don’t know,” he answers. “I might have come back angry and had an even greater need to fight. Or I might have come back and said ‘that’s enough.’”

Melson is now slated to fight Glen Tapia on the undercard of Gennady Golovkin vs. Daniel Geale at Madison Square Garden on July 26. A lot of people who care about Boyd don’t like the fight.

Tapia is 24 years old with a 21-and 1 record and 13 knockouts. His one loss was a brutal beatdown at the hands of James Kirkland in Atlantic City last December. But before being stopped, Tapia had Kirkland in trouble.

Boyd is on the card because he sells tickets. For the first time in his pro career, he’ll be a heavy underdog.

“I know I’m the opponent going in,” Melson says. “But it’s a dream of mine to fight at Madison Square Garden. I’ve fought at Barclays Center twice and Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City twice. Those are great places but they’re not the Garden. I don’t know how far I’ll go in boxing, but this is an opportunity for me to get to the next level. I want to be on the card and I’m willing to be the B-side fighter. It’s an opportunity for me to test myself and build on what I accomplished in my last fight.”

That fight took place on February 12 at Roseland Ballroom in New York against a club fighter named Donald Ward. It was supposed to be an easy victory for Melson. But in round three, he injured his brachial plexus (a network of nerve fibers running from the spine through his neck into his right arm).

“The pain was excruciating,” Boyd recalls. “I couldn’t control my arm. I couldn’t feel my fingers in my glove. I thought I was having a stroke. My first thought was, ‘I don’t know what’s happening to my body. I’m scared. I have to quit.’ I started to turn to take a knee. Then I thought about my training at West Point. To survive in combat and in the ring, you slow time down around you when, in reality, real time is taking place. You gut it out and do whatever you have to do to survive. That’s what I try to do for every second of every fight. That’s what I did that night.”

From that point on, Melson was a wounded soldier. “I was barely able to move my right arm,” he recalls. “I landed only one good right hand all night after that – a right hook – and it almost threw me into shock.”

But he survived and won a majority decision.

“Of all my fights, that’s the one that’s the most meaningful to me,” Boyd says. “It confirmed what I’ve always believed about myself; that I can overcome the worst kind of adversity and do what I have to do to prevail. The idea of quitting kept trying to creep into my head. But I was able to block out worrying about my injury and stay in the moment when I couldn’t move my arm and didn’t know what had happened to me and suppress the fear and do what I had to do to win. It’s not just about how far I can go in boxing. It’s about testing myself and enjoying the journey.”

“I love boxing,” Melson says, summing up. “It’s the ultimate experience for testing physical ability and intelligence under threat of the greatest adverse consequences possible short of death. And I love being called upon to comport myself with dignity when I’m in the spotlght, competing in a sport that some people think is barbaric but I think is wonderful.”

Thomas Hauser can be reached by email at thauser@rcn.com. His most recent book (Reflections: Conversations, Essays, and Other Writings) was published by the University of Arkansas Press.

People tend to stereotype fighters. Boyd Melson is not your average fighter. Then again, he’s not your average West Point graduate or your average Jewish kid from Westchester or your average anything.

Melson’s maternal grandparents were born in Poland and were Holocaust survivors. His grandfather escaped from a train that was en route to an extermination camp and joined the Russian Army in the war against Nazi Germany. His father, who spent 26 years in the United States military, is Louisiana Creole with African-American, French, Spanish, and Cherokee roots. Boyd’s sister is an officer in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate Group. His brother is in a public health doctoral program at New York Medical College.

Melson is thoughtful, affable, and a talker. “I was raised as a black male, and I’m Jewish,” he says. “But I’m open to different religions.” Then he elaborates, saying, “Religions are the same in a lot of ways. They’re just written differently. I believe that the highest power in the world is love. I believe that God exists in every one of us, but it’s not Him or Her or It that’s making things happen. It helps us to think that someone else is responsible for what goes on because it takes the burden off of us. But we’re all responsible for what we do and who we are. Bad things can happen for no good reason or because someone planned them to happen. You can ask, ‘Why do people get cancer?’ But you can also ask, ‘Why do people do bad things to each other?’ Good things are the same way. Some good things happen by accident and some good things happen by design. Loving human beings is my identity. I take that very seriously. Everything else in my life complements that.”

Those thoughts might sound incongruous coming from a professonal fighter, particularly one who graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point. After all, the sweet science and the United States Army aren’t the first things that come to mind when the average person thinks of “love.” But they’re part of the mosaic that’s Melson’s life.

West Point was a transformative experience for him.

“I’d heard stories about plebe year at West Point and thought getting yelled at would be funny.” Melson recalls. “That lasted about ten minutes. Then shock set in. I can’t really explain what the experience was like. But in the end, West Point teaches you to believe in yourself. You learn to sift through the crap to get to your objective. You learn that, no matter how bad something is, it will pass. You develop confidence that, no matter bad things are, you’ll find a way to get to where you want to be. You learn how to handle stress with everything – I mean everything – on the line.”

As part of the West Point curriculum, all plebes (first-year cadets) are required to take a boxing class that consists of twenty 45-minute lessons. The last four classes are graded bouts. Each plebe engages in four bouts with two one-minute rounds in each contest.

The purpose of the class isn’t to teach boxing skills as much as it’s to instill mental toughness; to teach young men to face their fears and prepare them for that moment down the road in military combat when they have only themselves to rely on.

“When you’re in combat,” Melson explains, “it’s not about American freedom at that particular moment in time. It’s about you and your buddies surviving. In boxing, you’re trying to hurt someone to win, and that person is trying to hurt you. You learn to think and make decisions under stress. You train your mind to not give up before your body does. Military combat is far more serious than boxing, but some of the demands are the same.”

Melson won all four of his plebe bouts and went from there into intramural boxing. Then he joined the intercollegiate boxing team.

“Eventually,” he recalls, “word began filtering through the ranks that this crazy plebe was knocking people out.”

Melson graduated from West Point in 2003. His first assignment after matriculation was to teach plebe boxing at West Point. Then, after four-and-a-half months of artillery school, he was assigned to the U.S. Army World Class Athlete Program, which trains Army personnel to compete at the national and international level with the ultimate goal of making the United States Olympic Team. He won numerous amateur honors and was a four-time United States Army champion.

Melson stopped boxing in November 2007 after failing to qualify for the United States Olympic Team. On May 31, 2008, he completed his five-year military commitment and took a job in corporate America, selling spinal implants for Medtronic (a leader in the development and manufacture of medical devices).

The new career fit nicely with a passion that Boyd had developed over time. On June 22, 2002, toward the end of his junior year at West Point, he’d met a woman named Christan Zaccagnino at a dance club. Christan had been wheelchair-bound since age ten after breaking her neck in a diving accident.

A relationship followed. And while Boyd and Christan haven’t been romantically involved since 2009, he still describes her as his “soulmate.”

Melson’s relationship with Christan led him to become a forceful advocate for stem-cell research.

“I’ve spent the past twelve years of my life trying to help Christan walk again,” Boyd says. “And that effort has turned into a quest to get all people who’ve suffered spinal cord injuries out of their chairs. I’ve spent a lot of time educating myself on paralysis and neurology and neuroscience and stem cells so I can understand the issues.”

“The hypocrisy and ignorance that surrounds the political debate over stem-cell research is incredibly frustrating to me,” Melson continues. “People are so ignorant on the issue. To give you one example; stem cells don’t just come from abortions. Stem cells can come from umbilical cords after a baby is born. One reason I wanted to make the U.S. Olympic Team was I’d heard that, if you won a gold medal, you’d get to shake hands with the President of the United States. I had a vision of winning a gold medal, meeting George Bush at the White House, and shaking hands with him so hard that it crushed the nerves in his hand and he needed stem-cell treatment to get the function back in his hand. Would I really have done it? Probably not. But I would have wanted to. And I have a very strong grip.”

Melson left Medtronic after two years and took a job as a medical device sales representative for Johnson & Johnson. “But over time,” he says, “a sadness came over me. I couldn’t figure it out. And then I realized it was because I was no longer trying to do something amazing and different from anyone else. I wanted to do something special. That meant I wanted to box again.”

Boyd resumed training in summer 2010 and turned pro with a four-round triumph over Andrew Jones on November 20 of that year. His professional record to date is 14 wins against 1 loss and a draw with 4 knockouts. The loss came by decision in an eight-round war against Delen Parsley. Melson was on the canvas once and Parsley twice.

Melson’s primary income now comes from teaching boxing and physical conditioning classes at Equinox (a national health club) and training a handful of private clients. He donates his fight purses to justadollarplease.org, a non-profit organization that raises funds for research at The Spinal Cord Injury Project at the W. M. Keck Center for Collaborative Neuroscience (affiliated with Rutgers University). In addition, Boyd and Christan have co-founded Team Fight to Walk, a 501(c)(3) corporation that raises money for Just A Dollar Please and will continue to support other research ventures after the clinical trials at Rutgers are complete.

“When Christopher Reeve died, we lost our celebrity,” Melson says. “I’m fighting to get attention, but not for myself. It’s for the cause.”

What sort of a future does Melson have in boxing?

He’s a 32-year-old southpaw without much power who gets hit too much.

“I don’t see him cracking the top ten in any legitimate rankings,” Showtime boxing analyst Steve Farhood says. “But he’s a great guy. And for his own sense of competitiveness, I hope he gets the chance to test himself at least once in the bigtime.”

Ron Katz (one of the savviest matchmakers in the business) is in accord and adds, “Very few people are blessed with the physical gifts you need to be a great fighter. Boyd doesn’t have those gifts. But he enjoys boxing. He does the best he can with what he has and gives it his all. There are far more talented fighters out there who don’t bring honor to the sport the way Boyd does.”

“I’m boxing because there’s so much that I love about it,” Melson says. “I love the the physical and the intellectual competition, the me versus you. It’s competition in its most basic form. You have to be willing to suffer in training to get to where you want to be. You have to be a masochist to do what you have to do. You have to be cruel to yourself to be a fighter. If you’re not pushing yourself to misery, you’re not preparing yourself properly.”

“For me, there’s always that moment in the dressing room before a fight when they bring the gloves in. I say to myself, ‘I must be crazy; I’m never doing this again.’ But at the same time, I want to get in the ring so I can make happen what I want to happen. Then I get in the ring. My adrenalin is flowing. I know I’m going to get hurt; it’s just a question of how much. I get hit in the face. And unless it’s on the nose or in the eye, it feels like pressure, that’s all. Getting hit on the back of the head hurts. Getting hit in the throat, sometimes I can’t breathe. All body shots hurt.”

And what goes through Melson’s mind when he hits someone?

“I hope I hurt him. In the military, very often, you’re trying to kill people. In boxing – let’s be honest about this – you’re trying to hurt people. Before the world was civilized, we were here to survive and procreate. Boxing brings you back to that. To survive, you conquer. But in both disciplines – military combat and boxing – you rely on brotherhood and you’re surrounded by love. You can only tap in to a certain level with anger, and then it runs dry. You can tap in deeper with love.”

Would Melson be boxing if he’d been deployed in the military and seen combat?

“I don’t know,” he answers. “I might have come back angry and had an even greater need to fight. Or I might have come back and said ‘that’s enough.’”

Melson is now slated to fight Glen Tapia on the undercard of Gennady Golovkin vs. Daniel Geale at Madison Square Garden on July 26. A lot of people who care about Boyd don’t like the fight.

Tapia is 24 years old with a 21-and 1 record and 13 knockouts. His one loss was a brutal beatdown at the hands of James Kirkland in Atlantic City last December. But before being stopped, Tapia had Kirkland in trouble.

Boyd is on the card because he sells tickets. For the first time in his pro career, he’ll be a heavy underdog.

“I know I’m the opponent going in,” Melson says. “But it’s a dream of mine to fight at Madison Square Garden. I’ve fought at Barclays Center twice and Boardway Hall in Atlantic City twice. Those are great places but they’re not the Garden. I don’t know how far I’ll go in boxing, but this is an opportunity for me to get to the next level. I want to be on the card and I’m willing to be the B-side fighter. It’s an opportunity for me to test myself and build on what I accomplished in my last fight.”

That fight took place on February 12 at Roseland Ballroom in New York against a club fighter named Donald Ward. It was supposed to be an easy victory for Melson. But in round three, he injured his brachial plexus (a network of nerve fibers running from the spine through his neck into his right arm).

“The pain was excruciating,” Boyd recalls. “I couldn’t control my arm. I couldn’t feel my fingers in my glove. I thought I was having a stroke. My first thought was, ‘I don’t know what’s happening to my body. I’m scared. I have to quit.’ I started to turn to take a knee. Then I thought about my training at West Point. To survive in combat and in the ring, you slow time down around you when, in reality, real time is taking place. You gut it out and do whatever you have to do to survive. That’s what I try to do for every second of every fight. That’s what I did that night.”

From that point on, Melson was a wounded soldier. “I was barely able to move my right arm,” he recalls. “I landed only one good right hand all night after that – a right hook – and it almost threw me into shock.”

But he survived and won a majority decision.

“Of all my fights, that’s the one that’s the most meaningful to me,” Boyd says. “It confirmed what I’ve always believed about myself; that I can overcome the worst kind of adversity and do what I have to do to prevail. The idea of quitting kept trying to creep into my head. But I was able to block out worrying about my injury and stay in the moment when I couldn’t move my arm and didn’t know what had happened to me and suppress the fear and do what I had to do to win. It’s not just about how far I can go in boxing. It’s about testing myself and enjoying the journey.”

“I love boxing,” Melson says, summing up. “It’s the ultimate experience for testing physical ability and intelligence under threat of the greatest adverse consequences possible short of death. And I love being called upon to comport myself with dignity when I’m in the spotlght, competing in a sport that some people think is barbaric but I think is wonderful.”

Thomas Hauser can be reached by email at thauser@rcn.com. His most recent book (Reflections: Conversations, Essays, and Other Writings) was published by the University of Arkansas Press.

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Thomas Hauser is the author of 52 books. In 2005, he was honored by the Boxing Writers Association of America, which bestowed the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism upon him. He was the first Internet writer ever to receive that award. In 2019, Hauser was chosen for boxing's highest honor: induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Lennox Lewis has observed, “A hundred years from now, if people want to learn about boxing in this era, they’ll read Thomas Hauser.”

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Oscar Duarte KOs Miguel Madueno in a Battle of Mexicans at Anaheim

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Oscar Duarte KOs Miguel Madueno in a Battle of Mexicans at Anaheim

No surprise. It was a Mexican beat down.

Oscar Duarte emerged victorious over fellow Mexican slugger Miguel Madueno by knockout to become a regional WBA super lightweight titlist on Saturday.

“Miguel (Madueno) is a gentleman and a warrior,” said Duarte. “He is a tough fighter but it was our night tonight.”

Chihuahua, Mexico’s Duarte (29-2-1, 23 KOs) started slowly but brutally stopped Sinaloa, Mexico’s Madueno who had never been knocked out before. The crowd at Honda Center in Anaheim roared its approval.

Not even new world titlist Keyshawn Davis was able to stop Madueno last July.

The taller Madueno opened up the first two rounds behind a stiff jab and some movement around the stalking style of Duarte. Though both Mexican fighters connected, it was Madueno who opened up stronger.

Then came the body shots.

“I knew he was going to move around when he felt my punches,” said Duarte.

The muscular Duarte had built a career as an inside fighter specializing in body shots. In the third round the light brown haired Duarte finally targeted the body and immediately saw results. Madueno had to change tactics.

Duarte had lost to Ryan Garcia by knockout 14 months ago in Texas. But since that loss he became the first to defeat Jojo Diaz by knockout and then last November beat down Uzbekistan’s Botirzhon Akhmedov. He was scheduled to fight Regis Prograis but an injury to the former world champion forced Madueno to step in as a replacement.

No matter.

Duarte began revving up the steamroller from the third round on with a pounding assault to the body and head that would not allow Madueno to dig in. A left hook to the chin by Duarte wobbled the Sinaloa fighter who had fought many times under the Thompson Boxing flag. The now departed Ken Thompson must have been proud at Madueno’s valiant performance.

It just wasn’t enough.

Madueno had success bouncing overhand rights on Duarte’s head but it was not enough. He battled through brutal exchanges and kept battling but the muscle-bound Duarte could not be halted.

In the fifth round Madueno tried to return to the long jabs and though he had early success, Duarte unleashed a three-punch combination to stop the nonsense. They both battled in a corner and Madueno emerged with blood streaming down his left eye. The referee ruled the cut was due to a blow.

“I felt his punches and I knew he was coming down,” Duarte said.

Duarte sensed the kill and opened up the sixth round with a bludgeoning six-punch volley. Madueno countered with a clean left hook. It was not a good exchange and it looked bad for the Sinaloan.

In the seventh round, Duarte looked like a Rhino that had just sharpened his horn and charged forward with bloodlust. The Chihuahua Mexican seemed determined to end the fight and connected with a right that staggered Madueno. Duarte followed up quickly with 17 more big blows to the body and head. Referee Thomas Taylor stepped in with a veering Madueno against the ropes and stopped the fight at 2:09 of the seventh round.

Duarte became the first man ever to defeat Madueno by knockout.

Now holding a regional WBA title, he is poised to fight for a world title.

“I’ll fight any champion. Let’s do it right now,” Duarte said.

Other Bouts

Houston’s Darius Fulgham (14-0, 12 KOs) proved too much for Detroit’s Winfred Harris Jr. (22-3-2) in overwhelming the clinching fighter and forcing a stoppage in the fourth round of their super middleweight bout. Fulgham was in control in every round that included a knockdown in the third round. Referee Ray Corona saw enough and stopped the beating.

Light flyweight Ricardo Sandoval (26-2, 18 KOs) soundly defeated the speedy Saleto Henderson (10-2, 7 KOs) by unanimous decision after 10 rounds. Both fighters showed off great chins but the taller Sandoval out-punched Henderson. Two judges scored it 100-90 for Sandoval and a third judge had it 98-92.

Ricardo Sandoval

Ricardo Sandoval

An entertaining welterweight clash saw Chicago’s Kenneth Sims Jr. (22-2-1, 8 KOs) outpoint San Antonio’s Kendo Castaneda (21-8, 9 KOs) but in the latter part of the match both slugged it out. The fans were pleased by the action.  All three judges favored Sims 99-91 twice and 98-92, but Castaneda proved he was not overmatched.

Bakersfield’s Joel Iriarte (6-0, 6 KOs) had no problems against Darel Harris (19-24-2) who he stopped at 1:21 of the second round in a welterweight clash.

Photos credit: Al Applerose

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Arnold Barboza Edges Past Jack Catterall in Manchester

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In a battle between elite counter-punchers Southern California’s Arnold Barboza Jr. slightly out-worked Jack Catterall in England to win a razor-close split decision and become the interim WBO super lightweight titlist on Saturday.

“It was a chess match,” said Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Boxing.

Barboza (32-0, 11 KOs) managed to overcome a hostile British crowd to defeat hometown favorite Catterall (30-2, 13 KOs) in a battle between defensive masters at the Co-Op Live Arena in Manchester.

It was a match made for boxing purists who love the art of feints and counter-punches that are a major part of orthodox fighter Barboza and the southpaw Catterall. It was a fight that harkened back to the battle between Sugar Ray Leonard and Wilfredo Benitez in 1979.

Feints and more feints.

Neither fighter looked to give up ground from the first round until the last. Each was cognizant of the other’s ability to counter-strike.

Catterall benefited early from the hometown crowd. With few blows fired and even fewer blows landing, the crowd’s roars for the local fighter might have registered with the judges. Though neither fighter connected more than a dozen punches in any round, the crowd was more pleased with “El Gato” Catterall’s efforts.

No round was clear-cut.

Barboza began to increase his tempo around the third round. Though the fighter from El Monte, California never loaded up on his punches, he was more ready to risk receive incoming blows from Catterall. And they did come.

Perhaps it was Barboza’s steadier use of the jab to the chest and head that made the difference. And when the Californian opened-up with combinations, Catterall was ready with jolting lefts. If not for Barboza’s chin he might have hit the deck from the blows.

In the seventh round Barboza found the target for repeated right hand leads. One after another connected. And when it looked like he might overrun the British fighter, things turned around as Catterall connected below the belt. When Barboza complained to the referee, Catterall delivered three head blows at the end of the round. The referee ruled the blow was low, but still, the follow-up blows did land.

It was anyone’s fight.

From the ninth round on Barboza took the lead as the aggressor while Catterall maintained his counter-punching mode. Though neither fighter could gain separation, Barboza was slightly busier and that may have proved the difference in the final four rounds.

Catterall connected with the heavier punches throughout the fight. But he just never opened-up with combinations and settled for counters. And though he connected often with single blows, combinations were rarely fired by the Manchester fighter. But he was always in the fight.

No knockdowns were scored and after 12 rounds one judge saw Catterall the winner 115-113, but two others gave Barboza the win by 115-113 to become the number one contender for the WBO super lightweight title.

“Since I was little I just wanted respect,” said Barboza. “I got my respect today.”

Catterall was gracious in defeat.

“It was a tricky fight,” Catterall said. “I thought I just did enough.”

Barboza said he does not care who he fights next.

“Anybody can get it,” he said.

Other Bouts

Super featherweight Reece “The Bomber” Bellotti (20-5,15 KOs) belted Michael Gomez Jr. throughout 10 rounds with body shots. Twice he floored Gomez with shots to the liver until the fight was stopped at the end of the ninth round by technical knockout.

In another super featherweight clash James Dickens (35-5, 14 KOs) repeatedly out-maneuvered Zelfa Barrett (31-3, 17 KOs) to win by unanimous decision after 10 rounds.

Welterweight Pat McCormack (7-0, 6 KOs) blasted out veteran Robbie Davies Jr. (24-6) with three knockdowns in six rounds. The fight was stopped at the end of the sixth round in a scheduled 10-round fight.

Photo credit: Mark Robinson / Matchroom

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Results and Recaps from Madison Square Garden where Keyshawn Davis KO’d Berinchyk

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Results-and-Recaps-from-Madison-Square-Garden-where-Keyshawn-Davis-KOed-Berinchyk

Top Rank was at the Theater at Madison Square Garden tonight. The main event of the 9-bout card was a battle between Olympic silver medalists Keyshawn Davis and Denys Berinchyk. A 36-year-old Ukrainian, Berinchyk was making the first defense of the WBO world lightweight title he won with an upset of Emanuel Navarrete.

Berinchyk, who turned pro at age 27, was undefeated heading in (19-0, 9 KOs), but Norfolk’s Davis, a stablemate of Terence Crawford, is big for the weight and was the younger man by 11 years and the oddsmakers anticipated that the title would change hands.

Berinchyk has an awkward style which lends itself to messy fights and this match was headed in that direction before Davis took charge in the third frame. He put the Ukrainian on the deck with a left to the body and finished the job in the next round with a wicked punch to the liver that sent Berincjyk to his knees, wincing in pain.

He wasn’t able to beat the count and Keyshawn Davis (13-0, 9 KOs, 1 NC) emerged the new champion. The official time was 1:45 of round four.

Co-Feature

Xander Zayas, ranked #1 at junior middleweight by the WBO, scored a ninth-round stoppage of hard-trying but out-classed Slawa Spomer (20-1). During the fight, Zayas (21-0, 13 KOs) worked the body effectively. Several of those punches strayed south of the border, but it was a legitimate body punch that spelled the end for Germany’s Spomer who was fighting for the first time with Roy Jones Jr in his corner. That punch, a left to the body, was followed by a barrage that led referee Charlie Fitch to step in and stop it. The official time was 2:01 of round nine.

Zayas, fighting for the seventh time at Madison Square Garden, moved one step closer to a title fight.

The first of three fights on the main ESPN platform was a well-matched middleweight contest between Vito Mielnicki Jr and Connor Coyle. In his debut at 160, Mielnicki, the pride of Roseland, New Jersey, seemingly did enough to edge it, but only one of the judges agreed (96-94) whereas the other two had it 95-95, producing a draw. The pro Mielnicki crowd booed the decision.

After the entertaining fourth round, Mielnicki was bleeding from his mouth and Coyle from a cut on the side of his left eye that would eventually bleed more profusely.

The 22-year-old Mielnicki, the younger man by 12 years, failed to win his 13th straight. He’s now 20-1-1. The 34-year-old Coyle, from Pinellas Park, Florida by way of Derby, Northern Ireland, remains undefeated at 21-0-1 and will presumably retain his lofty ranking (#3) in the World Boxing Association.

More

The final fight of the ESPN+ livestream showcased the 19-year-old son of Puerto Rican crowd-pleaser Juan Manuel “Juanma” Lopez, a former two-division world title-holder. “Juanmita” Lopez De Jesus did his dad proud, needing only 59 seconds to put away Bryan Santiago in a super flyweight contest slated for four rounds.

A second-generation Olympian, “Juanmita,” was stepping down in class after coming up short in his last start against two-time gold medalist Hasanboy Dusmatov in the 2024 Paris Games. He ended the contest with a short left hook that put Santiago (1-2-1) down hard, flat on his back.

Abdullah Mason, a 20-year-old, baby-faced assassin from Cleveland continued his rapid ascent up the lightweight ranks with a fourth-round blowout of Stockton, California’s Manuel Jaimes. It was the fifteenth win inside the distance in 17 starts for the undefeated Mason who has lightning-quick hands and appears destined for great things.

Jaimes (16-3-1) had lasted 10 rounds with perennial title challenger Rolly Romero in his last outing and hadn’t previously been stopped. He was on the canvas four times before referee David Fields waived it off at the 1:55 mark of round four.

Rising welterweight contender Rohan Polanco who represented the Dominican Republic in the Tokyo Olympiad, advanced to 15-0 (10 KOs) with a second-round stoppage of Puerto Rico’s Jean Carlos Torres (22-2). The official time was 1:48 of round two.

Polanco, who trains in Boston, decked Torres with a left-right combination in the opening frame and dropped him again in round two with a left hook. Torres was on his feet but on spaghetti legs when referee Eddie Claudio stepped in and stopped it.

Lanky welterweight Keon Davis, the youngest of the three fighting Davis brothers, improved to 2-0 with a second-round stoppage of Kansas City, Missouri plumber Ira Johnson (3-3). Davis had Johnson on the canvas twice before the bout was finished with Johnson showing no inclination to get up after the second knockdown.

Jared Anderson was expected to win as he pleased against unheralded Marios Kollias, but was extended the full 10-round distance by the Greek invader before prevailing on scores of 98-92 and 99-91 twice.

Despite the wide scorecards, Anderson looked very ordinary in a fight that was fought at a glacial pace. Coming off a humbling defeat to Martin Bakole who roughed-him-up and stopped him, the “Real Big Baby” needed a good showing to restore some of his lost luster but failed to deliver while advancing his record to 18-1 (15).

The only drama was whether Kollias (12-4-1) would moon the crowd on a St. Valentine’s Day as his shorts kept slipping down below the wide strap of his rubber groin protector. They never did fall completely down thanks to referee Fields who repeatedly stopped the action to pull them up.

In the lid-lifter, Chicago construction worker Juan Carlos Guerra (6-1-1) scored a split decision over Nico Ali Walsh (11-2-1). Two judges favored Guerra by 58-56 scores with the dissenter favoring Ali Walsh by the same margin.

Guerra was the aggressor and Ali Walsh, whose career has stalled, didn’t have enough steam in his jab to deter him.

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

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