Chilemba, Lepikhin Beneficiaries of Boxing’s Blended Brand of Immigration Reform

Published

9 years ago

March 5, 2015

The debate over immigration reform continues to rage in the United States Congress, but two fighters from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean are finding that temporarily sweating in pursuit of their boxing dreams while in the U.S. – or, for that matter, in Canada or Mexico – is enough to qualify them as semi-official North Americans.

To some – say, those geographically-challenged U.S. citizens who can’t quite remember that Pierre is the capital of South Dakota, or that Montpelier is the capital of Vermont — it might seem odd that Isaac “Golden Boy” Chilemba (23-2-2, 10 KOs), from Johannesburg, South Africa by way of his native Blantyre, Malawi, and Vasily “The Professor” Lepikhin (17-0, 9 KOs), from Gelendzhik, Russia, will square off in a scheduled 12-rounder for the vacant North American light heavyweight championship on March 14 in Montreal, Quebec. It is the opener of an HBO-televised tripleheader, the middle segment of which is the 12-round heavyweight matchup of Steve “USS” Cunningham (28-6, 13 KOs), a two-time former IBF light heavyweight champion from Philadelphia, and Vyacheslav Glazkov (19-0-1, 12 KOs), who is from Ukraine but now resides in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

The nightcap to this United Nations smorgasbord of pugilism pairs WBA/IBF/WBO light heavyweight champ Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev (26-0-1, 23 KOs), from Kopeysk, Russia, but now based in Los Angeles, against former WBC 175-pound titlist Jean Pascal, who hails from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, but now makes his home in Laval, Quebec.

Hey, we all were told decades ago that jet travel would make the world seem like a smaller place, but the long, international arm of boxing seemingly has accelerated the shrinkage.

So, what about the African and the Russian fighting for a North American championship belt? How can that be justified even under the strange and often arbitrary rules of the alphabet organizations, whose decision-makers seem to make things up as they go along?

Main Events CEO Kathy Duva, who promotes both Chilemba and Lepikhin, said birth nation or country of residence no longer are the only considerations for fighting for NABF or USBA titles, even though those designations would seem to be self-explanatory.

“They train in North America,” she explained. “All of the sanctioning bodies recently have taken to recognizing that the place where the fighters are based for training (that would be Los Angeles for Chilemba and Oxnard, Calif., for Lepikhin) is their home as well.”

But, really, what does it matter? The NABF championship is a nice but essentially meaningless trinket, sort of like the eighth-place finisher in a beauty pageant being named Miss Congeniality. What is of most consequence to fight fans everywhere in our global village has little to do with who holds some second-tier title or is the beneficiary of an NABF amendment written in crayon. All we want to know is, can the guy fight? Is he worth our time and effort for us to watch him ply his trade?

In Kovalev’s case, those answers are as obvious as the nose on Cyrano de Bergerac’s face. The lead stallion in the Main Events stable can box and he can punch, a nice package of skills that, coupled with his developing aura of charisma, stamp the most recent conqueror of the great Bernard Hopkins as a superstar of the present and probably quite a ways into the future. No, Kovalev isn’t the lineal light heavyweight champion – that would be WBC ruler Adonis “Superman” Stevenson (25-1, 21 KOs), who defends that title against against Sakio Bika (32-6-3, 21 KOs) in the Showtime-televised main event on April 4 in Quebec City – but the WBC has indicated to Stevenson that he must take on Kovalev for the whole shooting match in the near future, if they are both still in possession of their titles. If that were to happen – and it’s a big if — the survivor would be the first truly undisputed world champion since Hopkins rounded up the IBF, WBA, WBC and WBO middleweight belts in 2001.

It should be noted that Stevenson is another boxing product of multiple countries and cultures, having been born in Haiti, relocated to Laval, Quebec, and then to Las Vegas. Oh, and Bika is a native of Cameroon who now lives in Sydney, Australia.

Even though shadowy power broker Al Haymon apparently is intent on signing every boxer with a pulse to a roster already more populous than the state of Montana (capital: Helena), Duva professes not to be concerned. If her guy, Kovalev, keeps winning, and especially if he were to meet and beat Stevenson, thereby fully unifying the crown for a few moments (one or more of the alphabet groups would surely find a way to subdivide his realm), most if not all roads at 175 would lead to the Krusher.

“I take the long view of things because I’ve been doing this for so long,” Duva said when asked about Haymon’s apparent goal of establishing a boxing monopoly. “I have seen so many people come along over the years with the intention of taking over boxing and owning it and changing everything about it. Yet I still sit here in my chair and Bob Arum (the CEO of Top Rank) is still sitting in his. There are a few others out there, most notably Golden Boy (Oscar De La Hoya’s company, not Chilemba’s nickname), probably the only upstart to become a major promoter that I can think of that survived. Let’s wait to see what happens in a year or two.”

Duva believes that the light heavyweight division, so rich in history and tradition – some of the legendary champions it has produced are George Carpentier, Tommy Loughran, Gus Lesnevich, Billy Conn, Archie Moore, Harold Johnson, Bob Foster, Matthew Saad Muhammad and Michael Spinks – is ready for a new era of prosperity, perhaps even to the point of becoming what the talent-deep welterweight division is now. And she has an inkling that the 27-year-old Chilemba, who is ranked No. 2 by the WBC, No. 6 by the WBO and No. 7 by the IBF, and Lepikhin, 29, ranked No. 5 by the WBO and No. 12 by the WBA, have the right stuff to become major factors. You might not know them so much now, but the winner – maybe the loser, too – could leave a deep impression by the time the March 14 tripleheader concludes.

“I think in the next three or four years you’re going to see light heavyweights vying for that top spot on the pound-for-pound list, like you see welterweights doing it now,” she said, a not-so-veiled reference to the May 2 unification megafight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao. “This is the future. We have a few different things going. Sergey is always looking for the very biggest and best fights that he can get.”

On March 14, a pair of 175-pounders from thousands of miles away fight for the North American championship in French-speaking Canada. After that, who knows? The world isn’t such a big and strange place anymore, not for boxers without borders willing to have their passports frequently stamped.

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Bernard Fernandez

Zhilei Zhang KOs Joe Joyce; Calls Out Tyson Fury

Published

4 hours ago

September 23, 2023

Arne K. Lang

Zhilei-Zhang-KOs-Joe-Joyce-Calls-Out-Tyson-Fury

Joe Joyce activated his rematch clause after being stopped in the sixth frame by Zhilei Zhang in their first meeting. In hindsight, he may wish that he hadn’t. Tonight at London’s Wembley Stadium, Zhang stopped him again and far more conclusively than in their first encounter.

In the first meeting, Zhang, a southpaw, found a steady home for his stiff left jab. Targeting Joyce’s right eye, he eventually damaged the optic to where the ring doctor wouldn’t let Joyce continue. At the end, the fight was close on the cards and Joyce was confident that he would have pulled away if not for the issue with his eye.

In the rematch tonight, Zhang (26-1-1, 21 KOs) closed the curtain with his right hand. A thunderous right hook on the heels of a straight left pitched Joyce to the canvas where he landed face first. He appeared to beat the count by a whisker, but was seriously dazed and referee Steve Gray properly waived it off. The official time was 3:07 of round three.

Zhang, who lived up to his nickname, “Big Bang,” was credited with landing 29 power punches compared with only six for Joyce (15-2) who came in 25 pounds heavier than in their first meeting while still looking properly conditioned. One would be inclined to say that age finally caught with the “Juggernaut” who turned 38 since their last encounter, but Zhang, 40, is actually the older man. In his post-fight interview in the ring, the New Jersey resident, a two-time Olympian for China, when asked who he wanted to fight next, turned to the audience and said, “Do you want to see me shut Tyson Fury up?”

He meant it as a rhetorical question.

Semi-Windup

Light heavyweight Anthony Yarde was matched soft against late sub Jorge Silva, a 40-year-old Portuguese journeyman, and barely broke a sweat while scoring a second-round stoppage. Yarde backed Silva against a corner post and put him on the deck with a short right hand. Silva’s body language indicated that he had no interest in continuing and the referee accommodated him. The official time was 2:07 of round two.

A 30-year-old Londoner, Yarde (24-3, 23 KOs) was making his first start since being stopped in eight rounds by Artur Beterbiev in a bout that Yarde was winning on two of the scorecards. Silva, a late replacement for 19-3-1 Ricky Summers, falls to 22-9.

Also

Former leading super middleweight contender Zach Parker (23-1, 17 KOs) returned to the ring in a “shake-off-the-rust” fight against 40-year-old Frenchman Khalid Graidia and performed as expected. Graidia’s corner pulled him out after seven one-sided rounds.

In his previous fight, Parker was matched against John Ryder who he was favored to beat. The carrot for the winner was a lucrative date with Canelo Alvarez. Unfortunately for Parker, he suffered a broken hand and was unable to continue after four frames. Tonight, he carried 174 pounds, a hint that he plans to compete as a light heavyweight going forward. Indeed, he has expressed an interest in fighting Anthony Yarde. Graidia declined to 10-13-4.

The Zhang-Joyce and Yarde-Silva fights were live-streamed in the U.S. on ESPN+.

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

Published

1 day ago

September 22, 2023

Arne K. Lang

An-Ods-to-the-Polo-Grouns-on-the-Belated-100th-Anniversary-of-Dempsey-Firpo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

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

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

Coogan’s Bluff

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

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

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

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—

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

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

Published

2 days ago

September 21, 2023

David A. Avila

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

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

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

Golden Boy Promotions has reloaded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

De La Hoya knows that and has lived it.

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

MarvNation

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

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

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

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

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

Heavyweight Rematch in England

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

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

Welterweight showdown in Florida

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

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

Fights to Watch

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

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

Alexis Rocha photo credit: Golden Boy / Cris Esqueda

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