TERENCE CRAWFORD Is BWAA 2014 Fighter of the Year

Published

9 years ago

February 23, 2015

Cameron Dunkin, the Boxing Writers Association of America’s Manager of the Year in 2007, is a true believer. When he puts his faith in one of his fighters, it’s absolute, and he will preach about his guy’s abilities with all the fervor of a tent-show revivalist. Sometimes that faith is misplaced and he comes away disappointed, but other times his instincts prove totally correct.

Early on in Terence “Bud” Crawford’s professional career, Dunkin admits to frustration in his attempts to sell something that none of the major promoters seemed to want. He was talking up a professional boxer from Nebraska? Hey, everybody knows that state is better known for producing bumper crops of very large linemen for the University of Nebraska football team than for little guys who can hook off the jab.

“Nobody wanted him,” Dunkin, the BWAA’s 2007 Manager of the Year, said of Crawford, the Omaha native whose fight for widespread acknowledgment was more daunting than his almost casual mastery of the opponents he was facing in the ring.

And now?

With three impressive victories in 2014, the 27-year-old Crawford (25-0, 17 KOs) is the winner of the Boxing Writers Association’s Sugar Ray Robinson Award as Fighter of the Year. He will be honored at the BWAA’s 90^th annual Awards Ceremony on April 24 at a yet-to-be-determined venue in New York City, an event that will be emceed by Brooklyn Nets announcer David Diamante.

The remainder of the BWAA award winners will be announced Wednesday.

“It’s a surprise to me because that’s something that I never thought I’d be able to accomplish,” Crawford said when informed of his selection, in a close vote over WBO/IBF/WBA light heavyweight champion Sergey “Krusher”Kovalev. “Now that it’s happened, it almost feels like it’s not real.”

Dunkin’s persistent sales pitch finally was heard in the Top Rank organization, which isn’t surprising as several Dunkin-managed fighters (Crawford is co-managed by Brian McIntyre, who also serves as his trainer) have fought, and fought well, under the TR banner. Crawford signed a promotional contract with CEO Bob Arum’s star-making company shortly after he blasted out Derrick Campos in two rounds on July 30, 2011, to run his record to 13-0 with 10 victories inside the distance. But that bout was held at the Softball Country Arena in Denver, still too far off the radar screen to attract much attention.

That changed on March 30, 2013, at Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay when Crawford dominated Breidis Prescott in taking a unanimous, 10-round decision, in the process winning 26 of the 30 total rounds on the three judges’ scorecards. He was definitely now on that figurative radar screen, including that monitored by his own promotional company. He was summoned back to Vegas around that time – he can’t recall the exact date – to be interviewed by Top Rank representatives and to pose for photographs, a sure sign that he was moving up from bit player to potential leading man.

“They asked me some questions,” Crawford said. “I said I felt that I had Omaha on my back, and they seemed to like that. I said I was going to take Omaha all the way to the top, and that’s what I did.”

Crawford launched his breakthrough year of 2014 in fine fashion, wresting the WBO 135-pound championship on a unanimous decision over gritty Scotsman Ricky Burns on March 1 in Glasgow, Scotland. That earned him, in a professional sense, a return ticket home – his only previous pro bout in Nebraska was on July 31, 2010, a one-round knockout of Anthony Mora in Grand Island – and he treated his growing legion of Omaha fans with HBO-televised, title-defending routs of 2004 Olympic gold medalist and former unified featherweight champion Yuriokis Gamboa (who was floored four times in losing by ninth-round TKO on June 28) and a wide unanimous decision over wily veteran Ray Beltran on Nov. 29. The thumping of Gamboa was a finalist for the BWAA’s Muhammad Ali/Joe Frazier Fight of the Year Award.

Perhaps just as significantly, the Gamboa and Beltran fights drew paid audiences of 10,943 and 11,127 in Omaha’s CenturyLink Arena, with the beatdown of Gamboa, a Miami-based Cuban, the first world title fight to be held in Nebraska’s largest city since heavyweight champ Joe Frazier carved up Ron Stander, the “Bluffs Butcher,” for a fifth-round TKO on May 25, 1972. Like Crawford said, he has Omaha on his back and he’s determined to take it to a lofty perch in boxing it hasn’t been often, if at all.

It will take more eye-opening victories like those, but Crawford just might have a chance to someday enter the ring of Omaha’s most cherished sports heroes, along with baseball Hall of Famer Bob Gibson, Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Rodgers and three-time first-team All-America basketball player Doug McDermott, who is from Ames, Iowa, but starred for four years at Omaha’s Creighton University.

“I’m looking for a big year again,” Crawford, who plans to move up in weight, said of his plans for 2015, beginning with his April 18 non-title date with Puerto Rican super lightweight Thomas Dulorme (22-1, 14 KOs), the site of which has yet to be announced but very likely will be Omaha. “I’m going to continue taking the biggest and best fights out there. I don’t want to take no step down. I want to prove I’m the best fighter in and around my division, and one of the best in any division. To be great, you got to set your sights on the Pacquiaos and the Mayweathers. Those are the kind of guys you got to fight, and beat.”

Although Crawford has his own style, it is in fact a hodgepodge of moves and strategies he has lifted from any number of great fighters he has admired since the time he took up boxing at the age of seven.

“I used to fall asleep watching tapes of old fights,” he said, citing Shane Mosley, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Felix Trinidad, Marco Antonio Barrera, Julio Cesar Chavez, Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, Thomas Hearns and Ike Quartey as influences. “I’d try to take a little bit from this fighter, a little bit from that fighter.”

Not surprisingly, McIntyre has characterized Crawford as “a throwback fighter, from the ’70s or ’80s, just like Hagler, Hearns, Leonard and Duran. He will fight anyone, and duck nobody.”

Certainly, Beltran came away impressed by Omaha’s latest sporting favorite son. Every time he thought he was beginning to figure Crawford out, the champion would show him a different look.

“I’ve had six losses before him, but in my heart, as a man, I can really say this is the first guy that I feel had really beat me,” he said.

It is that ability to make in-round adjustments – he can go from orthodox to southpaw, and back again, as naturally as most people breathe in and out – that stamps Crawford as someone who could be a regular candidate for future Fighter of the Year awards.

“As a kid, that’s something my coaches always had me working on,” Crawford said. “They wanted me to be flexible, not one-dimensional like a lot of fighters are. We work on multiple things in the gym. Whenever I got something down pat, it was on to something else. And that was good, because I always want to learn. I try to soak up as much as I can.”

For Dunkin, Crawford’s arrival in the ranks of elite fighters is a happy occasion, on several levels. He said that Crawford not only is a tremendous talent, but an unspoiled, enthusiastic kid who is as good a person as he is a fighter.

“Both of them had great years,” he said of Crawford’s edging of Kovalev for the BWAA FOY Award. “Either one would have been a great choice, but I’m so glad my guy got it. I’m so happy for him. He’s worked so hard and never complains about anything. His attitude is always, `Let’s go. Let’s fight.’ You can really move a guy like that. He wants to fight, and he wants to be somebody.

“In a city like Omaha, which doesn’t have pro sports (other than a Triple-A baseball team), you just knew the time and place was ripe for somebody like him. He’s very popular, for all the right reasons. Not only can he really fight, but he’s such a great kid. I thought he would do well, but come on. To do as well as he has this fast … it’s just incredible.”

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Bernard Fernandez

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

Published

1 day ago

July 25, 2024

David A. Avila

Avila-Perspective-Chap-289-East-L.A.-A-Fight-Town-Claressa-Shields-and-More

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All that action takes place on Friday.

Elite Boxing

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

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

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

For tickets or information go to www.eliteboxingusa.com

Claressa Shields in Detroit

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

DAZN will stream the heavy-duty fight card.

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

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

Shields doesn’t lose.

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

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

Don’t get Shields mad.

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

That was a ferocious debut for both female pugilists.

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

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

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

Fights to Watch

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

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

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

Omar Trinidad photo by Lina Baker

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

Published

2 days ago

July 24, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

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

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

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

Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse

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

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

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

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Former World Bantamweight Champion Richie Sandoval Passes Away at Age 63

Published

4 days ago

July 22, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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