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SPINKS BROTHERS MADE HISTORY TOGETHER, BUT THEY WERE DECIDEDLY DIFFERENT
When you think about it, the odds against two brothers each winning the heavyweight championship of the world have to be staggeringly high, almost Powerball lottery-winning high. The odds against it happening twice have to that much higher.
While the combined heavyweight reigns of Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko lasted longer and almost certainly will gain both induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, the towering Ukrainians are merely the second set of siblings to pull off the improbable double-dip. The brothers Spinks – Leon and Michael – out-Klitschko’ed the Klitschkos by making history sooner and, in some ways, even more notably. Consider this: Although Wladimir won the super heavyweight gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, Vitali was denied a shot at Olympic glory when he was removed from the Ukrainian team that year after testing positive for a banned substance. The Spinks brothers, meanwhile, each took gold in 1976 in Montreal (Leon at light heavyweight, Michael at middleweight) as members of what many consider to be the finest U.S. Olympic boxing squad ever. And, before he moved up to heavyweight, Michael also was the undisputed light heavyweight champ as a pro, and one of the best ever at 175 pounds.
But there are other, very stark differences between the Klitschkos and the Spinkses. For one thing, the now-retired Vitali (at 43 he is five years older than Wladimir) and Wlad not only look and fight alike, they are almost mirror images of one another in their personal and professional demeanors. For all intents and purposes, they might as well be twins.
As for Leon and Michael … well, that isn’t really the case, is it? Leon, perhaps the more naturally gifted fighter, was a mercurial, unfocused free spirit, unwilling or unable to handle the pressure that came with the sudden onset of fame and fortune. He has been to the IBHOF, but only as an invited guest; it is highly unlikely “Neon Leon” ever will go to Canastota, N.Y., in any other capacity. Michael, his more serious, more dedicated younger brother, already has been officially certified as an all-time great, having been inducted into the IBHOF in 1994.
As further proof of the strength of the Spinks brothers’ pugilistic gene pool, Leon’s son, Cory Spinks, went on to win versions of the welterweight and junior middleweight championship.
The strange, intriguing and disparate journeys of the Spinkses are especially called to mind in September, the anniversary month of events for each that, as much as anything, define their legacies. On Sept. 15, 1978, exactly seven months after he shocked the world by wresting the WBC and WBA heavyweight titles from Muhammad Ali on a split decision at the Las Vegas Hilton – in only his eighth pro bout! – Leon came completely unglued in dropping a unanimous decision to Ali (only the WBA belt was on the line in the rematch), who became the first man to claim boxing’s biggest prize for the third time. A then-record indoor crowd of 63,500 jammed into the Louisiana Superdome to witness one of the oddest heavyweight title matchups ever.
“I know I could have made Leon upwards of $50 million if he had disciplined himself doing the right thing for four or five years,” Butch Lewis, who promoted both Spinks brothers and died in 2011, told me of the problems he encountered in trying to keep his unruliest charge under some kind of reasonable control. Instead, Leon blew through his $5 million in ring earnings ($3.75 million of which came from the second Ali fight) at warp speed and he tumbled into a tailspin that left him virtually destitute and his career in tatters. Evicted from his home for failure to keep up with the mortgage payments, Leon had to put most of his possessions into storage, and when he also got into arrears on that account, the most visible reminders of his former prominence were dispersed in an auction in which one lucky buyer acquired his heavyweight championship belts.
“What a waste of talent,” Top Rank boss Bob Arum, who promoted both Ali-Spinks bouts. (Lewis was a Top Rank vice president until, depending on whose version of the story you choose to believe, he was fired or left the company voluntarily after the rematch), said of Leon’s, um, casual approach to not only boxing, but just about everything.
Fast-forward seven years and six days, to Sept. 21, 1985, and Leon’s kid brother, Michael, made history on several fronts with his split decision over the heavily favored IBF heavyweight champ, Larry Holmes, at the Las Vegas Riviera. Michael’s upset of Holmes, who was making his 20th world title defense, not only prevented the “Easton Assassin” from stretching his record to 49-0, which would have tied the mark set 30 years earlier by the great Rocky Marciano, but it enabled the then-29-year-old Spinks to become the first light heavyweight champion to win the heavyweight title since Tommy Burns had done it in 1908. During the 77-year interim, there had been 13 challenges to the heavyweight title by nine light heavyweight champions or former champs, including failed bids by such legends as Billy Conn, Archie Moore and Bob Foster.
As if all that weren’t enough, Michael – who had gotten only $100,000 for his final light heavyweight title defense, an eighth-round stoppage of James MacDonald – made $1.1 million for the first matchup with Holmes, kick-starting the most lucrative stage of a career which culminated in total earnings of $24 million-plus, $13.5 million of which came from his final fight, that first-round knockout loss to Mike Tyson in Atlantic City Boardwalk Hall on June 27, 1988.
Unlike Leon, who scarcely trained for any fight, including his title-winning shocker over Ali, Michael was a tireless worker in the gym who wasn’t hesitant to try out unconventional methods if he thought they might prove beneficial. For the first go at Holmes, he turned himself over to New Orleans-based physical conditioning guru Mackie Shilstone, who held master’s degrees in psychology and nutrition. Shilstone – who later worked with Riddick Bowe, Bernard Hopkins and Roy Jones Jr. — formed an uneasy alliance with Michael’s old-school trainer, the legendary Eddie Futch, who grudgingly acquiesced to his fighter’s insistence on adhering to Shilstone’s deviations from long-held boxing precepts. Michael’s carefully monitored 4,500-calorie-a-day diet, which helped him pack on 25 pounds of muscle while reducing his body-fat percentage from 9.1 percent to 7.2 percent, obliged him to consume pancakes and protein shakes instead of steak, to lift weights instead of skipping rope, to run sprints instead of going on lengthy jogs.
For all their obvious differences, however, one thing remained constant: Leon was always there for Michael, just as Michael had been there in the chaos of the Superdome, lending whatever support he could to the perpetually distracted Leon. How could it have been otherwise? They had grown up in the notorious Pruitt-Igoe housing project, the bleakest of St. Louis ghettos, where gangs, drugs and violence were a way of life. Their overwhelmed father had abandoned the family when Michael was a toddler, leaving mom Kay to try to take care of her six sons and one daughter as a single parent.
But Kay couldn’t place a protective shield around her kids at all times. At some point Leon had had enough of the beatings he was getting from neighborhood toughs. He went to a nearby gym to learn to box, putting him on a path that eventually would lead him to Olympic gold and the heavyweight championship. Along the way he talked Michael into also trying his hand in the ring, and, well, of such things is destiny made.
Not that Leon was especially benevolent in taking young Michael under his wing. He seemed to delight in putting beatdowns on his little brother during their frequent sparring sessions, not out of cruelty but by way of teaching him that nothing worthwhile comes easily. Unfortunately for Leon, it was a lesson he was far more capable of passing along than in living out himself.
In 1994, Michael told me of the most important victory he ever registered, and, no, it was not his gold-medal triumph over the Soviet Union’s Rufat Riskiev, either of his signature points nods over Holmes or his light heavyweight championship slugfest over the rawhide-tough Dwight Braxton.
“It was back in St. Louis, in the early ’70s,” Michael recalled. “Me and Leon were passing by this gym, somewhere we’d never been in before. Leon said, `Hey, let’s check the place out.’ There was a ring in there, and Leon found a couple of pairs of gloves. We pulled them on and went at it for three rounds.”
This time, however, little brother gave as good as he got – even better, in fact.
“I couldn’t believe I was actually winning,” Michael continued. “You have to understand, Leon had always beaten the dog out of me. He always beat the dog out of everybody. Leon was the man in those days. There wasn’t anybody who could beat Leon. There wasn’t even anybody who could last three rounds with him. He used to beat me up so bad, I’d cry. He beat me like we weren’t even brothers. But he was trying to help me, in his own way. He’d say, `Mike, I know I take it hard on you, but if I took it any easier, you wouldn’t learn anything.”
Michael still had a warm, fuzzy satisfaction from the brotherly battle that is not part of either’s official records, and which caused him to believe that, just maybe, he, too, could become the man.
“I threw off the gloves and said, `Hey, man, I beat your ass. I got you.’ And that was it. We never sparred again. Looking back, that might have been my proudest moment in boxing. I figured if I could do that well against Leon, I could hold my own against anybody. From that point on, I was a completely different fighter. I had confidence in myself.”
But to most so-called experts, Leon, still on active duty with the Marine Corps, remained the brighter professional prospect during that magical Olympiad in Montreal. Although Sugar Ray Leonard was the clear breakout star of those Games, Leon was the brother who wangled a lucrative pro contract with Top Rank while Michael went back to his old job as a janitor at a St. Louis chemical plant where, as one co-worker later observed, his duties included “scrubbing floors and cleaning toilets.”
Top Rank eventually brought Michael into the fold, and the brothers continued to move forward in their careers, Leon at an accelerated rate. He was just 6-0-1 as a pro when he was granted his dream shot at Ali, who entered the ring out of shape and overconfident. But it was not as if Leon had prepared for the most important bout of his career any more intensely.
Butch Lewis recalled Leon’s training camp in Kiamesha, N.Y., a resort in the Catskills where the challenger was more apt to play hooky than to get in the kind of work a fighter, any fighter, needed to take full advantage of an opportunity of that magnitude. So notoriously unmanageable was Leon that Lewis had an associate sleep on a cot in front of the door to Leon’s room, to keep him from wandering off. The ploy failed; late one night Leon escaped anyway, through the window, over the roof and onto a porch, during a snowstorm. Lewis’ frantic search party found him the next morning shooting pool at a nearby tavern.
And if Leon was the loosest of cannons previously, he went completely off the radar screen for the Ali rematch, which was billed as “The Battle of New Orleans.” The battle turned out to be more of a skirmish – Ali winning handily on scores (by rounds) of 10-4-1 (twice) and 11-4 – fight week was a hodgepodge of Mardi Gras, Southern Decadence and amplified French Quarter frolics. Even in a city known for having what might described as relaxed moral standards, the influx of out-of-town hookers constituted such an invasion that bar patrons hoping to order an adult beverage or to just listen to some jazz couldn’t even find stools to sit on in the more popular watering holes. No wonder part of the prefight festivities included a convention of COYOTE members, an acronym that stood for “Call Off Your Old, Tired Ethics,” an American sex workers activist organization. More than a few of the hundreds of media members in town for the fight filed sidebars about the COYOTE confab, which seemed natural when you consider that boxing is largely about sticking the jab and going to the body.
Where was Leon during all this hubbub? It was a bit of a mystery, but rumors flew – many of which turned out to have ample basis in fact – that he was pub-crawling not in the comparative safety of the French Quarter, but in dives in crime-infested neighborhoods that even the local police were hesitant to go into.
“He was drunk every night he was there,” a disgusted Arum said of Leon’s hard-partying ways. “Leon wen to places our people didn’t dare go to. I’m surprise he didn’t wind up with a knife stuck in him.”
One of the fight game’s quintessential storytellers, the late Bert Randolph Sugar, noted that Leon, upon being picked up at the New Orleans airport by a member of the local sheriff’s staff, promptly fired up a joint on the way to his hotel. It was in keeping with a lifestyle that always was played out fast, loose and with few worries as to possible consequences.
“One time, Leon woke up in a hotel room, stark-naked, his wallet, watch and false teeth missing,” Sugar said with a flourish of his ever-present cigar. “The girl he’d spent the night with was gone, too. Leon called the cops and told them he’d been mugged. He though that sounded better than telling them he’d gotten drunk and been rolled.
“Here he was, the heavyweight champion of the world, and he’d have the police believe that somebody took off all his clothes and made off with his false teeth.”
The madness continued on fight night, when Leon arrived at the Superdome with an unwieldly entourage of 70 or so acolytes in tow. And when the fight started, a half-dozen or so of the more favored members of his crew turned his corner into a mob scene, all screaming to get his momentary attention. Among those jostling for position were brother Michael, trainers Sam Solomon and George Benton, and gunnery sergeant Art Reddon, who had been Leon’s boxing coach in the Marines.
After the sixth round, Benton – who had prepared Leon as well as he could for the first Ali fight, and who later enjoyed great success working with, among others, Evander Holyfield, Pernell Whitaker, Meldrick Taylor and Mark Breland – simply walked away.
“It was a zoo,” Benton said later. “It was like watching your baby drown. There was nothing you could do about it. I had no more control of the guy. I was useless. All I could do was get the hell out of it.”
Nor would the situation improve in the years that followed. A month before the rematch with Ali, a concerned Michael said that his older brother’s “mind is a total wreck now. He doesn’t have anybody around him but people who want his blood.”
Trading on what remained of his reputation, Leon – his entourage now scattered to the wind — got one more shot at the WBC heavyweight title, and was stopped in three one-sided rounds by Holmes on June 12, 1981, in Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena. He dropped down to cruiserweight and was paired against WBA champ Dwight Muhammad Qawi on March 22, 1986, but was TKO’ed in the sixth round. His record after Ali II was 16-15-1, putting his final career mark at 26-17-3, with 14 KOs.
“Leon was an incredible physical specimen in that he won the heavyweight championship and never trained a lick,” said Tom Vacca, a Detroit matchmaker who put him in several fights late in his career, including his last-gasp bid for glory against Qawi. “You’d see him the day before a fight smoking a cigarette with a beer in his hand and a girl on his arm.
“But he had an incredible heart. He had the heart of a lion. He beat Ali on heart alone. At some point, though, his youth and his heart began to fail him and he didn’t know what to do when that happened. Let’s face it, Leon was no rocket scientist.”
The most obvious similarity between Leon and Michael, other than the fact they were world champions, is their gap-toothed smiles, a distinction shared by, among others, former New York Giants defensive-end-turned-“Good Morning America” co-host Michael Strahan and the late British comic actor Terry-Thomas. Michael, however, wrung every ounce from his considerable boxing gifts, going 31-1 with 21 knockouts, and for that he deserves to be thought of more kindly than for the 91 brutal seconds he was in there against Tyson before being steamrolled into retirement. Little brother made it into the IBHOF the old-fashioned way: He earned it.
September is the brothers’ month of months, a time of celebration for one and regret for the other, of summits scaled and abysses tumbled into. It is the sort of mosaic into which any family’s intermingled lives is woven, illustrating how far some of us have come and how far others still need to go.
Bless their hearts, the tale of the Klitschkos’ rise to prominence somehow just doesn’t seem as compelling.
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Women’s Prizefighting Year End Review: The Best of the Best in 2024
Women’s Prizefighting Year End Review: The Best of the Best in 2024
It’s the end of the year.
Here are our awards for the best in women’s boxing. But first, a rundown on the state of the sport.
Maybe its my imagination but it seems that fewer female fights of magnitude took place in 2024 than in previous years.
A few promoters like 360 Promotions increased their involvement in women’s boxing while others such as Matchroom Boxing and Golden Boy Promotions seem stagnant. They are still staging female bouts but are not signing new additions.
American-based promotion company Top Rank, actually lost 50 percent of their female fighter roster when Seniesa Estrada, the undisputed minimumweight champion, retired recently. They still have Mikaela Mayer.
A promotion company making headlines and creating sparks in the boxing world is Most Valuable Promotions led by Jake Paul and Nakisa Bidarian. They signed Amanda Serrano and have invested in staging other female fights
This year, the top streaming company Netflix gambled on sponsoring Jake Paul versus Mike Tyson, along with Amanda Serrano versus Katie Taylor and hit a monster home run. According to Netflix metrics an estimated 74 million viewers watched the event that took place on Nov. 16 at Arlington, Texas.
“Breaking records like this is exactly what MVP was built to do – bring the biggest, most electrifying events to fans worldwide,” said Nakisa Bidarian co-founder of MVP.
History was made in viewership and at the gate where more than 70,000 fans packed AT&T Stadium for a record-setting $17.8 million in ticket sales outside of Las Vegas. It was the grand finale moment of the year.
Here are the major contributors to women’s boxing in 2024.
Fighter of the Year: Amanda Serrano
Other candidates: Katie Taylor, Claressa Shields, Franchon Crews, Dina Thorslund, and Yesica Nery Plata.
Amanda Serrano was chosen for not only taking part in the most viewed female title fight in history, but also for willingly sacrificing the health of her eye after suffering a massive cut during her brutal war with Taylor. She could have quit, walked away with tons of money and be given the technical decision after four rounds. She was ahead on the scorecards at that moment.
Instead, Serrano took more punches, more head butts and slugged her way through 10 magnificent and brilliant rounds against the great Taylor. Fans worldwide were captivated by their performance. Many women who had never watched a female fight were mesmerized and inspired.
Serrano once again proved that she would die in the ring rather than quit. Women and men were awed by her performance and grit. It was a moment blazed in the memories of millions.
Amanda Serrano is the Fighter of the Year.
Best Fight of the Year – Amanda Serrano versus Katie Taylor 2
Their first fight that took place two years ago in Madison Square Garden was the greatest female fight I had ever witnessed. The second fight surpassed it.
When you have two of the best warriors in the world willing to showcase their talent for entertainment regardless of the outcome, it’s like rubbing two sticks of dynamite together.
Serrano jumped on Taylor immediately and for about 20 seconds it looked like the Irish fighter would not make the end of the first round. Not quite. Taylor rallied behind her stubborn determination and pulled out every tool in her possession: elbows, head butts, low blows, whatever was needed to survive, Taylor used.
It reminded me of an old world title fight in 2005 between Jose Luis Castillo a master of fighting dirty and Julio Diaz. I asked about the dirty tactics by Castillo and Diaz simply said, “It’s a fight. It’s not chess. You do what you have to do.”
Taylor did what she had to do to win and the world saw a magnificent fight.
Other candidates: Seniesa Estrada versus Yokasta Valle, Mikaela Mayer versus Sandy Ryan, and Ginny Fuchs vs Adelaida Ruiz.
KO of the Year – Lauren Price KO3 Bexcy Mateus.
Dec. 14, in Liverpool, England.
The IBO welterweight titlist lowered the boom on Bexcy Mateus sending her to the floor thrice. She ended the fight with a one-two combination that left Mateus frozen while standing along the ropes. Another left cross rocket blasted her to the ground. Devastating.
Other candidates: Claressa Shields KO of Vanessa LePage-Joanisse, Gabriela Fundora KO of Gabriela Alaniz, Dina Thorslund vs Mary Romero, Amanda Serrano KO of Stevie Morgan.
Pro’s Pro Award – Jessica Camara
Jessica Camara defeated Hyun Mi Choi in South Korea to win the WBA gold title on April 27, 2024. The match took place in Suwon where Canada’s Camara defeated Choi by split decision after 10 rounds.
Camara, who is managed by Brian Cohen, has fought numerous champions including Kali Reis, Heather Hardy and Melissa St. Vil. She has become a pro fighter that you know will be involved in a good and entertaining fight and is always in search of elite competition. She eagerly accepted the fight in South Korea against Choi. Few fighters are willing to do that.
Next up for Camara is WBC titlist Caroline Dubois set for Jan. 11, in Sheffield, England.
Electric Fighters Club
These are women who never fail to provide excitement and drama when they step in the prize ring. When you only have two-minute rounds there’s no time to run around the boxing ring.
Here are some of the fighters that take advantage of every second and they do it with skill:
Gabriela Fundora, Mizuki Hiruta, Ellie Scotney, Lauren Price, Clara Lescurat, Adelaida Ruiz, Ginny Fuchs, Mikaela Mayer, Yokasta Valle, Sandy Ryan, Chantelle Cameron, Ebanie Bridges, Tsunami Tenkai, Dina Thorslund, Evelin Bermudez, Gabriela Alaniz, Caroline Dubois, Beatriz Ferreira, and LeAnna Cruz.
Claressa Shields Movie and More
A motion picture based on Claressa Shields titled “The Fire Inside” debuts on Wednesday, Dec. 25, nationwide. Most boxing fans know that Shields has world titles in various weight divisions. But they don’t know about her childhood and how she rose to fame.
Also, Shields (15-0, 3 KOs) will be fighting Danielle Perkins (5-0, 2 KOs) for the undisputed heavyweight world championship on Sunday Feb. 2, at Dort Financial Center in Flint, Michigan. DAZN will stream the Salita Promotions fight card.
“Claressa Shields is shining a spotlight on Flint – first on the big screen and then in the ring on Sunday, February 2,” said event promoter Dmitriy Salita, president of Salita Promotions. “Claressa leads by example. She is a trailblazer and has been an advocate for equality since she was a young lady. This event promises to be one of the most significant sporting and cultural events of the year. You don’t want to miss it, either live, in person or live on DAZN.”
Shields is only 29 years old and turns 30 next March. What more can she accomplish?
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Lucas Bahdi Forged the TSS 2024 Knockout of the Year
A Knockout of the Year doesn’t have to be a one-punch knockout, but it must arrive with the suddenness of a thunderclap on a clear day and the punch or punches must be so harsh as to obviate the need for a “10-count.” And, if rendered by an underdog, that makes the KO resonate more loudly.
Within these parameters, Lucas Bahdi’s knockout of Ashton “H2O” Sylva still jumped off the page. The thunderclap happened on July 20 in Tampa, Florida, on a show promoted by Jake Paul with Paul and the great Amanda Serrano sharing the bill against soft opponents in the featured bouts.
The 30-year-old Bahdi (16-0, 14 KOs) and the 20-year-old Sylva (11-0, 9 KOs) were both undefeated, but Bahdi was accorded scant chance of defeating Jake Paul’s house fighter.
Sylva was 18 years old and had seven pro fights under his belt, winning all inside the distance, when he signed with Paul’s company, Most Valuable Promotions, in 2022. “We believe that Ashton has that talent, that flashiness, that style, that knockout power, that charisma to really be a massive, massive, superstar…” said the “Problem Child” when announcing that Sylva had signed with his company.
Jake Paul was so confident that his protege would accomplish big things that he matched Sylva with Floyd “Kid Austin” Schofield. Currently 18-0 and ranked #2 by the WBA, Schofield was further along than Sylva in the pantheon of hot lightweight prospects. But Schofield backed out, alleging an injury, opening the door to a substitute.
Enter Lucas Bahdi who despite his eye-catching record was a virtual unknown. This would be his first outing on U.S. soil. All of his previous bouts were staged in Mexico or in Canada, mostly in his native Ontario province. “My opponent may have changed,” said Sylva who hails from Long Beach, California, “but the result will be the same, I will get the W and continue my path to greatness.”
The first five rounds were all Sylva. The Canadian had no antidote for Sylva’s speed and quickness. He was outclassed.
Then, in round six, it all came unglued for the precocious California. Out of the blue, Bahdi stiffened him with a hard right hand. Another right quickly followed, knocking Sylva unconscious. A third punch, a sweeping left, was superfluous. Jake Paul’s phenom was already out cold.
Sylva landed face-first on the canvas. He lay still as his handlers and medics rushed to his aid. It was scarifying. “May God restore him,” said ring announcer Joe Martinez as he was being stretchered out of the ring.
The good news is that Ashton “H2O” Silva will be able to resume his career. He is expected back in the ring as early as February. As for Lucas Bahdi, architect of the Knockout of the Year, he has added one more win to his ledger, winning a 10-round decision on the undercard of the Paul vs Tyson spectacle, and we will presumably be hearing a lot more about him.
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Usyk Outpoints Fury and Itauma has the “Wow Factor” in Riyadh
Usyk Outpoints Fury and Itauma has the “Wow Factor” in Riyadh
Oleksandr Usyk left no doubt that he is the best heavyweight of his generation and one of the greatest boxers of all time with a unanimous decision over Tyson Fury tonight at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. But although the Ukrainian won eight rounds on all three scorecards, this was no runaway. To pirate a line from one of the DAZN talking heads, Fury had his moments in every round but Usyk had more moments.
The early rounds were fought at a faster pace than the first meeting back in May. At the mid-point, the fight was even. The next three rounds – the next five to some observers – were all Usyk who threw more punches and landed the cleaner shots.
Fury won the final round in the eyes of this reporter scoring at home, but by then he needed a knockout to pull the match out of the fire.
The last round was an outstanding climax to an entertaining chess match during which both fighters took turns being the pursuer and the pursued.
An Olympic gold medalist and a unified world champion at cruiserweight and heavyweight, the amazing Usyk improved his ledger to 23-0 (14). His next fight, more than likely, will come against the winner of the Feb. 22 match in Ridayh between Daniel Dubois and Joseph Parker which will share the bill with the rematch between Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol.
Fury (34-2-1) may fight Anthony Joshua next. Regardless, no one wants a piece of Moses Itauma right now although the kid is only 19 years old.
Moses Itauma
Raised in London by a Nigerian father and a Slovakian mother, Itauma turned heads once again with another “wow” performance. None of his last seven opponents lasted beyond the second round.
His opponent tonight, 34-year-old Australian Demsey McKean, lasted less than two minutes. Itauma, a southpaw with blazing fast hands, had the Aussie on the deck twice during the 117-second skirmish. The first knockdown was the result of a cuffing punch that landed high on the head; the second knockdown was produced by an overhand left. McKean went down hard as his chief cornerman bounded on to the ring apron to halt the massacre.
Itauma (12-0, 10 KOs after going 20-0 as an amateur) is the real deal. It was the second straight loss for McKean (22-2) who lasted into the 10th round against Filip Hrgovic in his last start.
Bohachuk-Davis
In a fight billed as the co-main although it preceded Itauma-McKean, Serhii Bohachuk, an LA-based Ukrainian, stopped Ishmael Davis whose corner pulled him out after six frames.
Both fighters were coming off a loss in fights that were close on the scorecards, Bohachuk falling to Vergil Ortiz Jr in a Las Vegas barnburner and Davis losing to Josh Kelly.
Davis, who took the fight on short notice, subbing for Ismail Madrimov, declined to 13-2. He landed a few good shots but was on the canvas in the second round, compliments of a short left hook, and the relentless Bohachuk (25-2, 24 KOs) eventually wore him down.
Fisher-Allen
In a messy, 10-round bar brawl masquerading as a boxing match, Johnny Fisher, the Romford Bull, won a split decision over British countryman David Allen. Two judges favored Fisher by 95-94 tallies with the dissenter favoring Allen 96-93. When the scores were announced, there was a chorus of boos and those watching at home were outraged.
Allen was a step up in class for Fisher. The Doncaster man had a decent record (23-5-2 heading in) and had been routinely matched tough (his former opponents included Dillian Whyte, Luis “King Kong” Ortiz and three former Olympians). But Allen was fairly considered no more than a journeyman and Fisher (12-0 with 11 KOs, eight in the opening round) was a huge favorite.
In round five, Allen had Fisher on the canvas twice although only one was ruled a true knockdown. From that point, he landed the harder shots and, at the final bell, he fell to canvas shedding tears of joy, convinced that he had won.
He did not win, but he exposed Johnny Fisher as a fighter too slow to compete with elite heavyweights, a British version of the ponderous Russian-Canadian campaigner Arslanbek Makhmudov.
Other Bouts of Note
In a spirited 10-round featherweight match, Scotland’s Lee McGregor, a former European bantamweight champion and stablemate of former unified 140-pound title-holder Josh Taylor, advanced to 15-1-1 (11) with a unanimous decision over Isaac Lowe (25-3-3). The judges had it 96-92 and 97-91 twice.
A cousin and regular houseguest of Tyson Fury, Lowe fought most of the fight with cuts around both eyes and was twice deducted a point for losing his gumshield.
In a fight between super featherweights that could have gone either way, Liverpool southpaw Peter McGrail improved to 11-1 (6) with a 10-round unanimous decision over late sub Rhys Edwards. The judges had it 96-95 and 96-94 twice.
McGrail, a Tokyo Olympian and 2018 Commonwealth Games gold medalist, fought from the third round on with a cut above his right eye, the result of an accidental clash of heads. It was the first loss for Edwards (16-1), a 24-year-old Welshman who has another fight booked in three weeks.
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