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Chilemba, Lepikhin Beneficiaries of Boxing’s Blended Brand of Immigration Reform
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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Bygone Days: The Largest Crowd Ever at Madison Square Garden Sees Zivic TKO Armstrong
Bygone Days: The Largest Crowd Ever at Madison Square Garden Sees Zivic TKO Armstrong
There’s not much happening on the boxing front this month. That’s consistent with the historical pattern.
Fight promoters of yesteryear tended to pull back after the Christmas and New Year holidays on the assumption that fight fans had less discretionary income at their disposal. Weather was a contributing factor. In olden days, more boxing cards were staged outdoors and the most attractive match-ups tended to be summertime events.
There were exceptions, of course. On Jan. 17, 1941, an SRO crowd of 23,180 filled Madison Square Garden to the rafters to witness the welterweight title fight between Fritzie Zivic and Henry Armstrong. (This was the third Madison Square Garden, situated at 50th Street and Eighth Avenue, roughly 17 blocks north of the current Garden which sits atop Pennsylvania Station. The first two arenas to take this name were situated farther south adjacent to Madison Square Park).
This was a rematch. They had fought here in October of the previous year. In a shocker, Zivic won a 15-round decision. The fight was close on the scorecards. Referee Arthur Donovan and one of the judges had it even after 14 rounds, but Zivic had won his rounds more decisively and he punctuated his well-earned triumph by knocking Armstrong face-first to the canvas as the final bell sounded.
This was a huge upset.
Armstrong had a rocky beginning to his pro career, but he came on like gangbusters after trainer/manager Eddie Mead acquired his contract with backing from Broadway and Hollywood star Al Jolson. Heading into his first match with Zivic – the nineteenth defense of the title he won from Barney Ross – Hammerin’ Henry had suffered only one defeat in his previous 60 fights, that coming in his second meeting with Lou Ambers, a controversial decision.
Shirley Povich, the nationally-known sports columnist for the Washington Post, conducted an informal survey of boxing insiders and found only person who gave Zivic a chance. The dissident was Chris Dundee (then far more well-known than his younger brother Angelo). “Zivic knows all the tricks,” said Dundee. “He’ll butt Armstrong with his head, gouge him with his thumbs and hit him just as low as Armstrong [who had five points deducted for low blows in his bout with Ambers].”
Indeed, Pittsburgh’s Ferdinand “Fritzie” Zivic, the youngest and best of five fighting sons of a Croatian immigrant steelworker (Fritzie’s two oldest brothers represented the U.S. at the 1920 Antwerp Olympics) would attract a cult following because of his facility for bending the rules. It would be said that no one was more adept at using his thumbs to blind an opponent or using the laces of his gloves as an anti-coagulant, undoing the work of a fighter’s cut man.
Although it was generally understood that at age 28 his best days were behind him, Henry Armstrong was chalked the favorite in the rematch (albeit a very short favorite) a tribute to his body of work. Although he had mastered Armstrong in their first encounter, most boxing insiders considered Fritzie little more than a high-class journeyman and he hadn’t looked sharp in his most recent fight, a 10-round non-title affair with lightweight champion Lew Jenkins who had the best of it in the eyes of most observers although the match was declared a draw.
The Jan. 17 rematch was a one-sided affair. Veteran New York Times scribe James P. Dawson gave Armstrong only two rounds before referee Donovan pulled the plug at the 52-second mark of the twelfth round. Armstrong, boxing’s great perpetual motion machine, a world title-holder in three weight classes, repaired to his dressing room bleeding from his nose and his mouth and with both eyes swollen nearly shut. But his effort could not have been more courageous.
At the conclusion of the 10th frame, Donovan went to Armstrong’s corner and said something to the effect, “you will have to show me something, Henry, or I will have to stop it.” What followed was Armstrong’s best round.
“[Armstrong] pulled the crowd to its feet in as glorious a rally as this observer has seen in twenty-five years of attendance at these ring battles,” wrote Dawson. But Armstrong, who had been stopped only once previously, that coming in his pro debut, had punched himself out and had nothing left.
Armstrong retired after this fight, siting his worsening eyesight, but he returned in the summer of the following year, soldiering on for 46 more fights, winning 37 to finish 149-21-10. During this run, he was reacquainted with Fritzie Zivic. Their third encounter was fought in San Francisco before a near-capacity crowd of 8,000 at the Civic Auditorium and Armstrong got his revenge, setting the pace and working the body effectively to win a 10-round decision. By then the welterweight title had passed into the hands of Freddie Cochran.
Hammerin’ Henry (aka Homicide Hank) Armstrong was named to the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the inaugural class of 1990. Fritzie Zivic followed him into the Hall three years later.
Active from 1931 to 1949, Zivic lost 65 of his 231 fights – the most of anyone in the Hall of Fame, a dubious distinction – but there was yet little controversy when he was named to the Canastota shrine because one would be hard-pressed to find anyone who had fought a tougher schedule. Aside from Armstrong and Jenkins, he had four fights with Jake LaMotta, four with Kid Azteca, three with Charley Burley, two with Sugar Ray Robinson, two with Beau Jack, and singles with the likes of Billy Conn, Lou Ambers, and Bob Montgomery. Of the aforementioned, only Azteca, in their final meeting in Mexico City, and Sugar Ray, in their second encounter, were able to win inside the distance.
By the way, it has been written that no event of any kind at any of the four Madison Square Gardens ever drew a larger crowd than the crowd that turned out on Jan. 17, 1941, to see the rematch between Fritzie Zivic and Henry Armstrong. Needless to say, prizefighting was big in those days.
A recognized authority on the history of prizefighting and the history of American sports gambling, TSS editor-in-chief Arne K. Lang is the author of five books including “Prizefighting: An American History,” released by McFarland in 2008 and re-released in a paperback edition in 2020.
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Jai Opetaia Brutally KOs David Nyika, Cementing his Status as the World’s Top Cruiserweight
In his fifth title defense, lineal cruiserweight champion Jai Opetaia (27-0, 21 KOs) successfully defended his belt with a brutal fourth-round stoppage of former sparring partner David Nyika. The bout was contested in Broadbeach, Queensland, Australia where Opetaia won the IBF title in 2022 with a hard-earned decision over Maris Briedis with Nyika on the undercard. Both fighters reside in the general area although Nyika, a former Olympic bronze medalist, hails from New Zealand.
The six-foot-six Nyika, who was undefeated in 10 pro fights with nine KOs, wasn’t afraid to mix it up with Opetaia although had never fought beyond five rounds and took the fight on three weeks’ notice when obscure German campaigner Huseyin Cinkara suffered an ankle injury in training and had to pull out. He wobbled Opetaia in the second round in a fight that was an entertaining slugfest for as long as it lasted.
In round four, the champion but Nyika on the canvas with his patented right uppercut and then finished matters moments later with a combination climaxed with an explosive left hand. Nyika was unconscious before he hit the mat.
Opetaia’s promoter Eddie Hearn wants Opetaia to unify the title and then pursue a match with Oleksandr Usyk. Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez, a Golden Boy Promotions fighter, holds the WBA and WBO versions of the title and is expected to be Opetaia’s next opponent. The WBC diadem is in the hands of grizzled Badou Jack.
Other Fights of Note
Brisbane heavyweight Justis Huni (12-0, 7 KOs) wacked out overmatched South African import Shaun Potgieter (10-2), ending the contest at the 33-second mark of the second round. The 25-year-old, six-foot-four Huni turned pro in 2020 after losing a 3-round decision to two-time Olympic gold medalist Bakhodir Jalolov. There’s talk of matching him with England’s 20-year-old sensation Moses Itauma which would be a delicious pairing.
Eddie Hearn’s newest signee Teremoana Junior won his match even quicker, needing less than a minute to dismiss Osasu Otobo, a German heavyweight of Nigerian descent.
The six-foot-six Teremoana, who akin to Huni hails from Brisbane and turned pro after losing to the formidable Jalolov, has won all six of his pro fights by knockout while answering the bell for only eight rounds. He has an interesting lineage; his father is from the Cook Islands.
Rising 20-year-old Max “Money” McIntyre, a six-foot-three super middleweight, scored three knockdowns en route to a sixth-round stoppage of Abdulselam Saman, advancing his record to 7-0 (6 KOs). As one can surmise, McIntyre is a big fan of Floyd Mayweather.
The Opetaia-Nyika fight card aired on DAZN pay-per-view (39.99) in the Antipodes and just plain DAZN elsewhere.
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R.I.P. Paul Bamba (1989-2024): The Story Behind the Story
Paul Bamba, a cruiserweight, passed away at age 35 on Dec. 27 six days after defeating Rogelio Medina before a few hundred fans on a boxing card at a performing arts center in Carteret, New Jersey. No cause of death has been forthcoming, leading to rampant speculation. Was it suicide, or perhaps a brain injury, and if the latter was it triggered by a pre-existing condition?
Fuel for the latter comes in the form of a letter that surfaced after his death. Dated July 25, 2023, it was written by Dr. Alina Sharinn, a board-certified neurologist licensed in New York and Florida.
“Mr. Bamba has suffered a concussion and an episode of traumatic diplopia within the past year and now presents with increasing headaches. His MRI of the brain revealed white matter changes in both frontal lobes,” wrote Bamba’s doctor.
Her recommendation was that he stop boxing temporarily while also avoiding any other activity at which he was at risk of head trauma.
Dr. Sherinn’s letter was written three months after Bamba was defeated by Chris Avila in a 4-round contest in New Orleans. He lost all four rounds on all three scorecards, reducing his record to 5-3.
Bamba took a break from boxing after fighting Avila. Eight months would elapse before he returned to the ring. His next four fights were in Santa Marta, Colombia, against opponents who were collectively 4-23 at the time that he fought them. The most experienced of the quartet, Victor Coronado, was 38 years old.
He won all four inside the distance and ten more knockouts would follow, the last against Medina in a bout sanctioned by the World Boxing Association for the WBA Gold title. As widely reported, the stoppage, his 14th, broke Mike Tyson’s record for the most consecutive knockouts within a calendar year. That would have been a nice feather in his cap if only it were true.
Born in Puerto Rico, Paul Bamba was a former U.S. Marine who spent time in Iraq as an infantry machine gunner. In interviews on social media platforms, he is well-spoken and introspective without a trace of the boastfulness that many prizefighters exhibit when talking to an outsider. Interviewed in a corridor of the arena after stopping Medina, he was almost apologetic, acknowledging that he still had a lot to learn.
His life story is inspirational.
His early years were spent in foster homes. He was homeless for a time after returning to civilian life. Speaking with Boxing Scene’s Lucas Ketelle, Bamba said, “I didn’t have any direction after leaving the Marine corps. I hit rock bottom, couldn’t afford a place to stay…I was renting a mattress that was shoved behind someone’s sofa.”
He turned his life around when he ventured into the Morris Park Boxing Gym in the Bronx where he learned the rudiments of boxing under the tutelage of former WBA welterweight champion Aaron “Superman” Davis. “I love boxing,” he would say. “The confidence it gives you permeates into other aspects of your life.”
Bamba’s newfound confidence allowed him to carve out a successful career as a personal trainer. His most famous client was the Grammy Award winning R&B singer-songwriter Ne-Yo who signed Bamba to his new sports management company late in the boxer’s Knockout skein. Bamba was with Ne-Yo in Atlanta when he passed away. Ne-Yo broke the news on his Instagram platform.
Paul Bamba had been pursuing a fight with Jake Paul. Winning the WBA Gold belt opened up other potentially lucrative options. In theory, the holder of the belt is one step removed from a world title fight. Next comes an eliminator and, if he wins that one, a true title fight attached to a hefty purse will follow…in theory.
Rogelio “Porky” Medina, who brought a 42-10 record, had competed against some top-shelf guys, e.g., Zurdo Ramirez, Badou Jack, James DeGale, David Benavidez, Caleb Plant; going the distance with DeGale and Plant. However, only two of his 42 wins had come in fights outside Mexico, at age 36 he was over the hill, and his best work had come as a super middleweight.
Thirteen months ago, Medina carried 168 ½ pounds for a match in New Zealand in which he was knocked out in the first round. He came in more than 30 pounds heavier, specifically 202 ¼, for his match with Paul Bamba. In between, he knocked out a 54-year-old man in Guadalajara to infuse his ledger with a little brighter sheen.
Why did the WBA see fit to sanction the Bamba-Medina match as a title fight? That’s a rhetorical question. And for the record, the record for the most consecutive knockouts within a calendar year wasn’t previously held by Mike Tyson. LaMar Clark, a heavyweight from Cedar City, Utah, scored 29 consecutive knockouts in 1958 after opening the year by winning a 6-round decision. (If you are inclined to believe that all or most of those knockouts were legitimate, then perhaps I can interest you in buying the Brooklyn Bridge.)
Clark was being primped for a fight with a good purse which came when he was dispatched to Louisville to fight a fellow who was fairly new to the professional boxing scene, a former U.S. Olympian then known as Cassius Clay who knocked him out in the second round in what proved to be Clark’s final fight.
Paul Bamba was a much better fighter than LaMar Clark, of that I am quite certain. However, if Paul Bamba had gone on to meet one of the world’s elite cruiserweights, a similar outcome would have undoubtedly ensued.
One can summon up the Bamba-Medina fight on the internet although the video isn’t great – it was obviously filmed on a smart phone – and pieces of it are missing. Bamba was winning with his higher workrate when Medina took his unexpected leave, but one doesn’t have to be a boxing savant to see that Paul’s hand and foot speed were slow and that there were big holes in his defense.
This isn’t meant to be a knock on the decedent. Being able to box even four rounds at a fast clip and still be fresh is one of the most underrated achievements in all of human endurance sports. Bamba’s life story is indeed inspirational. When he talked about the importance of “giving back,” he was sincere. In an early interview, he mentioned having helped out at a Harlem food pantry.
Paul Bamba had to die to become well-known within the fight fraternity, let alone in the larger society. One hopes that his death will inspire the sport’s regulators to be more vigilant in assaying a boxer’s medical history and, if somehow his untimely death leads to the dissolution of the fetid World Boxing Association, his legacy would be even greater.
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