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The Champ

When The Champ walks in the room, everything changes. The room seems smaller. The air changes from communal oxygen to single-purpose and the other people in the room suddenly try to draw shorter breaths in hopes no one notices they’re stealing what’s rightfully his.
But The Champ (pictured above, photo by Rachel McCarson) doesn’t care. Or maybe he doesn’t notice. He’s not there to worry about mundane trivialities such as who owns what. He already know what’s his, and he knows he can pretty much take whatever else it is he wants in the room, too, if he so desires.
He’s The Champ.
Our man strolls in and everyone goes quiet. There’s a hush that swells and no one wants to be the one to pierce it with a sound. The tension makes the moment taut like a balloon ready to pop. He towers over every other person at Lucky Street Boxing Gym in Fort Lauderdale, Florida like they’re ants—like we are all tiny little ants.
It’s hot outside but it’s hotter inside where two boxing rings and scores of regular folk mill about in anticipation of seeing him train. Bleachers are set up for people to come in everyday and they do. There are rules, of course, and everyone follows them. No cell phones, no cameras and no pictures while he’s sparring. Don’t bother him while he trains. Be quiet.
Other stuff, too. If you break a rule, you’re asked to leave.
No one breaks a rule.
It’s media day. People from all over the world have come to see him today. They prowl about the gym like leopards. They try to blend in but they stick out here and there because of their spots. They’ve come for pictures and videos and quotes. The Champ notices the interlopers and gives each of them a few minutes of his time. He’s smart, affable and intentional with every word. If life’s a chess match, most people walk around the world trying to anticipate the next move. The Champ isn’t most people. He’s the type who knows the moves that come after the ones everyone else is busy thinking about, and he’s pondering them in four different languages.
After a few more minutes, The Champ heads to the boxing ring closest to the bleachers. The white mat is marred with sweat and grime and blood. More will be added soon. The Champ sits in a gray metal chair just outside of the ring. He pours talcum into each of his size 15 shoes. The white powder looks like diamonds as it falls. When he’s finished, he serenely begins taping his hands, a ritual that lasts what seems like a lifetime to those snapping pictures with their phones in hopes of later showing their loved ones who they saw pour powder in shoes today.
Soon enough, The Champ is in the ring shadowboxing. He’s throwing punches light but they look like they’d break every bone in your body. Even the air seems to wince at them. The Champ isn’t just big and powerful. He’s fast, athletic, agile and skilled. He was born to fight, and while it may have taken fire, brimstone and the genius of the late Emanuel Steward to mold him into the heavyweight champion of the world, it certainly did happen. He is the champion, and The Champ is the most dominant heavyweight titleholder since Larry Holmes. In fact, the only fighters in the history of the storied division who compare to him statistically are the greatest of the greats: Holmes, Muhammad Ali and Joe Louis.
The Champ is sparring today. Two pugs are dressed up nice to take a beating. One looks tough and mean, the way every fighter of Eastern European descent seems to look these days. But he’s not nearly as big as The Champ and even if he was, he doesn’t have the power, speed or skill to compete with him. Nope, this fellow is just target practice.
The kid has guts though. He slaps down hard on The Champ’s guard using his fist as a hammer trying to create an opening. But The Champ stuffs it and returns the favor the only way a man carrying the moniker “Dr. Steelhammer” could possibly do: heavy, hard and with great malice.
The kid is in there for a reason though. He goes three rounds with The Champ, two of which he was clearly carried. The lion in the ring stalks the lamb, and the kid circles around with long arms and a high guard the way The Champ’s opponent, Bryant Jennings, might try to do on April 25 at Madison Square Garden in New York.
The Champ will be ready then. Hell, he’s ready now.
Round 3 is brutal. Where before, the only shots the kid caught were light taps, The Champ is hurling everything with full force now. The World Champion is no longer taking it easy on him. He strafes the kid’s face with all the classics: a jab that looks more like a telephone poll, a right cross that might as well be a dump truck and that vaunted left hook he used last time out to behead his opponent with ruthless precision. The kid is standing by the end of things, but only because The Champ wants it that way.
Next.
One sparring partner scurries away and another one replaces him. This time, the threat is real. Joseph Parker, a young, talented and internationally accomplished prospect from New Zealand, is clearly more formidable and since he hasn’t just fought three rounds, he’s got fresh legs and a clean face. He’s tall like The Champ, has long arms and knows how to use them.
Two rounds fly by and Parker is doing pretty well. He’s keeping The Champ off of him with jabs and crosses to the body and is able to use his reach in ways most fighters can’t. If Jennings is smart, he’ll try to do some of the things Parker did. He did well enough for six minutes to not appear completely outclassed. That’s something. He even landed one excellent right-hand counter flush under The Champ’s left eye after the two traded feints in the middle of the ring.
You haven’t seen guts until you’ve seen a man stare straight at The Champ threaten bodily harm with a punch and the man throws one hard back at him anyway.
But Parker’s conundrum will be the one Jennings’ finds, too. When the third round between them starts, the sixth and final round of sparring for the day, The Champ shakes off all gentlemanly pretense and rocks Parker around the ring as if the preceding two rounds had been some sort of mirage.
Whatever The Champ was working on beforehand, (likely slipping and blocking incoming punches from someone with as long as arms as Parker) he’s down with now. All that is left for Parker to deal with is the World Heavyweight Champion, one of the finest who has ever lived. He strives admirably and with great courage, but Parker is simply no match for him at this stage of his career.
The Champ is too much for him. He’s too much for him the way he’s been too much for every other heavyweight in the world for the last nine years and the way he’ll probably be too much for Jennings in his next fight, too.
When the violence is over, The Champ takes off his gloves and headgear. The remaining hour is spent towering over everything and everyone in the room. Some want quotes. Some want pictures. Some wants autographs. He is the master of his domain. He struts around the room like a rooster. Even his walk is pregnant with integrity, and it’s the kind that sharpens a spine like a razor, the kind that can only be earned the hard way.
Almost no one else in the world has that kind of walk. How could they? Wladimir Klitschko has it because he’s gone through hell and back to become the man he is today. Redemption was knocked to the canvas three times against Samuel Peter almost ten years ago and it clawed its way back to its feet every single time. It never gave up, and the remembrances of knockout losses to Lamon Brewster and Corrie Sanders the years prior didn’t keep it from trying to exist either.
The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. That’s something Ernest Hemingway wrote. He wasn’t writing about The Champ but he might as well have been. Klitschko is stronger now precisely because he was broken so thoroughly before. He is strong in the broken places.
Strong, intelligent, direct, polite and serious: Klitschko is unlike anyone you’ll ever meet. You can see something in his eye when he talks, whether he’s looking at you or not. You know where you stand with him right from the beginning because it rests there in his gaze, and it’s something not seen in many other human beings on the planet, much less prizefighters.
He’s The Champ. You are not. He knows it.
You do, too.
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Avila Perspective, Chap. 323: Benn vs Eubank Family Feud and More

Next generation rivals Conor Benn and Chris Eubank Jr. carry on the family legacy of feudal warring in the prize ring on Saturday.
This is huge in British boxing.
Eubank (34-3, 25 KOs) holds the fringe IBO middleweight title but won’t be defending it against the smaller welterweight Benn (23-0, 14 KOs) on Saturday, April 26, at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London. DAZN will stream the Matchroom Boxing card.
This is about family pride.
The parents of Eubank and Benn actually began the feud in the 1990s.
Papa Nigel Benn fought Papa Chris Eubank twice. Losing as a middleweight in November 1990 at Birmingham, England, then fighting to a draw as a super middleweight in October 1993 in Manchester. Both were world title fights.
Eubank was undefeated and won the WBO middleweight world title in 1990 against Nigel Benn by knockout. He defended it three times before moving up and winning the vacant WBO super middleweight title in September 1991. He defended the super middleweight title 14 times before suffering his first pro defeat in March 1995 against Steve Collins.
Benn won the WBO middleweight title in April 1990 against Doug DeWitt and defended it once before losing to Eubank in November 1990. He moved up in weight and took the WBC super middleweight title from Mauro Galvano in Italy by technical knockout in October 1992. He defended the title nine times until losing in March 1996. His last fight was in November 1996, a loss to Steve Collins.
Animosity between the two families continues this weekend in the boxing ring.
Conor Benn, the son of Nigel, has fought mostly as a welterweight but lately has participated in the super welterweight division. He is several inches shorter in height than Eubank but has power and speed. Kind of a British version of Gervonta “Tank” Davis.
“It’s always personal, every opponent I fight is personal. People want to say it’s strictly business, but it’s never business. If someone is trying to put their hands on me, trying to render me unconscious, it’s never business,” said Benn.
This fight was scheduled twice before and cut short twice due to failed PED tests by Benn. The weight limit agreed upon is 160 pounds.
Eubank, a natural middleweight, has exchanged taunts with Benn for years. He recently avenged a loss to Liam Smith with a knockout victory in September 2023.
“This fight isn’t about size or weight. It’s about skill. It’s about dedication. It’s about expertise and all those areas in which I excel in,” said Eubank. “I have many, many more years of experience over Conor Benn, and that will be the deciding factor of the night.”
Because this fight was postponed twice, the animosity between the two feuding fighters has increased the attention of their fans. Both fighters are anxious to flatten each other.
“He’s another opponent in my way trying to crush my dreams. trying to take food off my plate and trying to render me unconscious. That’s how I look at him,” said Benn.
Eubank smiles.
“Whether it’s boxing, whether it’s a gun fight. Defense, offense, foot movement, speed, power. I am the superior boxer in each of those departments and so many more – which is why I’m so confident,” he said.
Supporting Bout
Former world champion Liam Smith (33-4-1, 20 KOs) tangles with Ireland’s Aaron McKenna (19-0, 10 KOs) in a middleweight fight set for 12 rounds on the Benn-Eubank undercard in London.
“Beefy” Smith has long been known as one of the fighting Smith brothers and recently lost to Eubank a year and a half ago. It was only the second time in 38 bouts he had been stopped. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez did it several years ago.
McKenna is a familiar name in Southern California. The Irish fighter fought numerous times on Golden Boy Promotion cards between 2017 and 2019 before returning to the United Kingdom and his assault on continuing the middleweight division. This is a big step for the tall Irish fighter.
It’s youth versus experience.
“I’ve been calling for big fights like this for the last two or three years, and it’s a fight I’m really excited for. I plan to make the most of it and make a statement win on Saturday night,” said McKenna, one of two fighting brothers.
Monster in L.A.
Japan’s super star Naoya “Monster” Inoue arrived in Los Angeles for last day workouts before his Las Vegas showdown against Ramon Cardenas on Sunday May 4, at T-Mobile Arena. ESPN will televise and stream the Top Rank card.
It’s been four years since the super bantamweight world champion performed in the US and during that time Naoya (29-0, 26 KOs) gathered world titles in different weight divisions. The Japanese slugger has also gained fame as perhaps the best fighter on the planet. Cardenas is 26-1 with 14 KOs.
Pomona Fights
Super featherweights Mathias Radcliffe (9-0-1) and Ezequiel Flores (6-4) lead a boxing card called “DMG Night of Champions” on Saturday April 26, at the historic Fox Theater in downtown Pomona, Calif.
Michaela Bracamontes (11-2-1) and Jesus Torres Beltran (8-4-1) will be fighting for a regional WBC super featherweight title. More than eight bouts are scheduled.
Doors open at 6 p.m. For ticket information go to: www.tix.com/dmgnightofchampions
Fights to Watch
Sat. DAZN 9 a.m. Conor Benn (23-0) vs Chris Eubank Jr. (34-3); Liam Smith (33-4-1) vs Aaron McKenna (19-0).
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Floyd Mayweather has Another Phenom and his name is Curmel Moton

Floyd Mayweather has Another Phenom and his name is Curmel Moton
In any endeavor, the defining feature of a phenom is his youth. Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Bryce Harper was a phenom. He was on the radar screen of baseball’s most powerful player agents when he was 14 years old.
Curmel Moton, who turns 19 in June, is a phenom. Of all the young boxing stars out there, wrote James Slater in July of last year, “Curmel Moton is the one to get most excited about.”
Moton was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. His father Curtis Moton, a barber by trade, was a big boxing fan and specifically a big fan of Floyd Mayweather Jr. When Curmel was six, Curtis packed up his wife (Curmel’s stepmom) and his son and moved to Las Vegas. Curtis wanted his son to get involved in boxing and there was no better place to develop one’s latent talents than in Las Vegas where many of the sport’s top practitioners came to train.
Many father-son relationships have been ruined, or at least frayed, by a father’s unrealistic expectations for his son, but when it came to boxing, the boy was a natural and he felt right at home in the gym.
The gym the Motons patronized was the Mayweather Boxing Club. Curtis took his son there in hopes of catching the eye of the proprietor. “Floyd would occasionally drop by the gym and I was there so often that he came to recognize me,” says Curmel. What he fails to add is that the trainers there had Floyd’s ear. “This kid is special,” they told him.
It costs a great deal of money for a kid to travel around the country competing in a slew of amateur boxing tournaments. Only a few have the luxury of a sponsor. For the vast majority, fund raisers such as car washes keep the wheels greased.
Floyd Mayweather stepped in with the financial backing needed for the Motons to canvas the country in tournaments. As an amateur, Curmel was — take your pick — 156-7 or 144-6 or 61-3 (the latter figure from boxrec). Regardless, at virtually every tournament at which he appeared, Curmel Moton was the cock of the walk.
Before the pandemic, Floyd Mayweather Jr had a stable of boxers he promoted under the banner of “The Money Team.” In talking about his boxers, Floyd was understated with one glaring exception – Gervonta “Tank” Davis, now one of boxing’s top earners.
When Floyd took to praising Curmel Moton with the same effusive language, folks stood up and took notice.
Curmel made his pro debut on Sept. 30, 2023, at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on the undercard of the super middleweight title fight between Canelo Alvarez and Jermell Charlo. After stopping his opponent in the opening round, he addressed a flock of reporters in the media room with Floyd standing at his side. “I felt ready,” he said, “I knew I had Floyd behind me. He believes in me. I had the utmost confidence going into the fight. And I went in there and did what I do.”
Floyd ventured the opinion that Curmel was already a better fighter than Leigh Wood, the reigning WBA world featherweight champion who would successfully defend his belt the following week.
Moton’s boxing style has been described as a blend of Floyd Mayweather and Tank Davis. “I grew up watching Floyd, so it’s natural I have some similarities to him,” says Curmel who sparred with Tank in late November of 2021 as Davis was preparing for his match with Isaac “Pitbull” Cruz. Curmell says he did okay. He was then 15 years old and still in school; he dropped out as soon as he reached the age of 16.
Curmel is now 7-0 with six KOs, four coming in the opening round. He pitched an 8-round shutout the only time he was taken the distance. It’s not yet official, but he returns to the ring on May 31 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas where Caleb Plant and Jermall Charlo are co-featured in matches conceived as tune-ups for a fall showdown. The fight card will reportedly be free for Amazon Prime Video subscribers.
Curmel’s presumptive opponent is Renny Viamonte, a 28-year-old Las Vegas-based Cuban with a 4-1-1 (2) record. It will be Curmel’s first professional fight with Kofi Jantuah the chief voice in his corner. A two-time world title challenger who began his career in his native Ghana, the 50-year-old Jantuah has worked almost exclusively with amateurs, a recent exception being Mikaela Mayer.
It would seem that the phenom needs a tougher opponent than Viamonte at this stage of his career. However, the match is intriguing in one regard. Viamonte is lanky. Listed at 5-foot-11, he will have a seven-inch height advantage.
Keeping his weight down has already been problematic for Moton. He tipped the scales at 128 ½ for his most recent fight. His May 31 bout, he says, will be contested at 135 and down the road it’s reasonable to think he will blossom into a welterweight. And with each bump up in weight, his short stature will theoretically be more of a handicap.
For fun, we asked Moton to name the top fighter on his pound-for-pound list. “[Oleksandr] Usyk is number one right now,” he said without hesitation,” great footwork, but guys like Canelo, Crawford, Inoue, and Bivol are right there.”
It’s notable that there isn’t a young gun on that list. Usyk is 38, a year older than Crawford; Inoue is the pup at age 32.
Moton anticipates that his name will appear on pound-for-pound lists within the next two or three years. True, history is replete with examples of phenoms who flamed out early, but we wouldn’t bet against it.
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Arne’s Almanac: The First Boxing Writers Assoc. of America Dinner Was Quite the Shindig

The first annual dinner of the Boxing Writers Association of America was staged on April 25, 1926 in the grand ballroom of New York’s Hotel Astor, an edifice that rivaled the original Waldorf Astoria as the swankiest hotel in the city. Back then, the organization was known as the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York.
The ballroom was configured to hold 1200 for the banquet which was reportedly oversubscribed. Among those listed as agreeing to attend were the governors of six states (New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Maryland) and the mayors of 10 of America’s largest cities.
In 1926, radio was in its infancy and the digital age was decades away (and inconceivable). So, every journalist who regularly covered boxing was a newspaper and/or magazine writer, editor, or cartoonist. And at this juncture in American history, there were plenty of outlets for someone who wanted to pursue a career as a sportswriter and had the requisite skills to get hired.
The following papers were represented at the inaugural boxing writers’ dinner:
New York Times
New York News
New York World
New York Sun
New York Journal
New York Post
New York Mirror
New York Telegram
New York Graphic
New York Herald Tribune
Brooklyn Eagle
Brooklyn Times
Brooklyn Standard Union
Brooklyn Citizen
Bronx Home News
This isn’t a complete list because a few of these papers, notably the New York World and the New York Journal, had strong afternoon editions that functioned as independent papers. Plus, scribes from both big national wire services (Associated Press and UPI) attended the banquet and there were undoubtedly a smattering of scribes from papers in New Jersey and Connecticut.
Back then, the event’s organizer Nat Fleischer, sports editor of the New York Telegram and the driving force behind The Ring magazine, had little choice but to limit the journalistic component of the gathering to writers in the New York metropolitan area. There wasn’t a ballroom big enough to accommodate a good-sized response if he had extended the welcome to every boxing writer in North America.
The keynote speaker at the inaugural dinner was New York’s charismatic Jazz Age mayor James J. “Jimmy” Walker, architect of the transformative Walker Law of 1920 which ushered in a new era of boxing in the Empire State with a template that would guide reformers in many other jurisdictions.
Prizefighting was then associated with hooligans. In his speech, Mayor Walker promised to rid the sport of their ilk. “Boxing, as you know, is closest to my heart,” said hizzoner. “So I tell you the police force is behind you against those who would besmirch or injure boxing. Rowdyism doesn’t belong in this town or in your game.” (In 1945, Walker would be the recipient of the Edward J. Neil Memorial Award given for meritorious service to the sport. The oldest of the BWAA awards, the previous recipients were all active or former boxers. The award, no longer issued under that title, was named for an Associated Press sportswriter and war correspondent who died from shrapnel wounds covering the Spanish Civil War.)
Another speaker was well-traveled sportswriter Wilbur Wood, then affiliated with the Brooklyn Citizen. He told the assembly that the aim of the organization was two-fold: to help defend the game against its detractors and to promote harmony among the various factions.
Of course, the 1926 dinner wouldn’t have been as well-attended without the entertainment. According to press dispatches, Broadway stars and performers from some of the city’s top nightclubs would be there to regale the attendees. Among the names bandied about were vaudeville superstars Sophie Tucker and Jimmy Durante, the latter of whom would appear with his trio, Durante, (Lou) Clayton, and (Eddie) Jackson.
There was a contraction of New York newspapers during the Great Depression. Although empirical evidence is lacking, the inaugural boxing writers dinner was likely the largest of its kind. Fifteen years later, in 1941, the event drew “more than 200” according to a news report. There was no mention of entertainment.
In 1950, for the first time, the annual dinner was opened to the public. For $25, a civilian could get a meal and mingle with some of his favorite fighters. Sugar Ray Robinson was the Edward J. Neil Award winner that year, honored for his ring exploits and for donating his purse from the Charlie Fusari fight to the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund.
There was no formal announcement when the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York was re-christened the Boxing Writers Association of America, but by the late 1940s reporters were referencing the annual event as simply the boxing writers dinner. By then, it had become traditional to hold the annual affair in January, a practice discontinued after 1971.
The winnowing of New York’s newspaper herd plus competing banquets in other parts of the country forced Nat Fleischer’s baby to adapt. And more adaptations will be necessary in the immediate future as the future of the BWAA, as it currently exists, is threatened by new technologies. If the forthcoming BWAA dinner (April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in mid-Manhattan) were restricted to wordsmiths from the traditional print media, the gathering would be too small to cover the nut and the congregants would be drawn disproportionately from the geriatric class.
Some of those adaptations have already started. Last year, Las Vegas resident Sean Zittel, a recent UNLV graduate, had the distinction of becoming the first videographer welcomed into the BWAA. With more and more people getting their news from sound bites, rather than the written word, the videographer serves an important function.
The reporters who conducted interviews with pen and paper have gone the way of the dodo bird and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A taped interview for a “talkie” has more integrity than a story culled from a paper and pen interview because it is unfiltered. Many years ago, some reporters, after interviewing the great Joe Louis, put words in his mouth that made him seem like a dullard, words consistent with the Sambo stereotype. In other instances, the language of some athletes was reconstructed to the point where the reader would think the athlete had a second job as an English professor.
The content created by videographers is free from that bias. More of them will inevitably join the BWAA and similar organizations in the future.
Photo: Nat Fleischer is flanked by Sugar Ray Robinson and Tony Zale at the 1947 boxing writers dinner.
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