The Hauser Report: Alvarez-Kirkland and More

Published

10 years ago

May 11, 2015

On September 30, 2014, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez attended a luncheon at HBO to announce a multi-fight contract with the network. His red hair and green pullover shirt gave the impression of an early Christmas present.

One reason Canelo signed to fight on HBO was that he didn’t want to play second fiddle to Floyd Mayweather at Showtime. Beyond that, he’s a key puzzle piece in HBO’s desire to continue its appeal to Latino subscribers and Golden Boy’s attempt to maintain its standing as a major promoter.

“My focus is Canelo, one hundred percent,” Oscar De La Hoya told reporters at the luncheon. “Whatever he asks, I have to do.”

At age 24, Alvarez has established himself as a marketable commodity within the boxing community. He’s not a crossover star in United States. Nor is he an elite fighter. In ESPN’s most recent pound-for-pound poll, not one panelist gave him a top-ten vote. De La Hoya, by age 24, had won an Olympic gold medal and beaten the likes of Julio Cesar Chavez and Pernell Whitaker. And let’s not forget what happened when Canelo fought Floyd Mayweather two years ago.

That said; with Julio Cesar Chavez Jr imploding and Juan Manuel Marquez on the verge of retirement, Alvarez is Mexican boxing’s most promising hope for the future. He engenders good ratings. He has amassed a 45-and 1 (32 KOs) ring record against increasingly credible competition. And there have been times (most notably against Erislandy Lara and Austin Trout) when he went in tougher than he had to.

On Saturday, May 9, Alvarez entered the ring for the first time pursuant to his new contract with HBO. Bart Barry summed up the impending confrontation as follows:

“A week after Pacquiao-Mayweather, Mexican Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez will fight Texan James Kirkland at Minute Maid Park in Houston before a crowd that should be about three times the MGM Grand’s crowd. ‘But oh,’ cries a passel of aspiring businessmen from their parents’ couches. ‘They won’t make as much money.’ First of all, why the hell are you so excited about strangers making money? Second of all, three times as many aficionados and potential aficionados will have a chance to see a major event in a sport you care about, which is better for your sport in every single way.”

Kirkland entered the ring with a 32-and-1 (28 KOs) record. James has granite hands but a bit of glass in his chin. He came out punching at the opening bell. Canelo weathered the storm, mixed effective body punching with solid shots to the head, hurt Kirkland with a hard right to the body, and knocked him down with a straight right up top.

There was 1:20 left in round one. Kirkland was in trouble but survived the onslaught that followed, including a barrage that left him all but out on his feet at the close of the stanza.

Round two was marked by exciting back-and-forth action.

In round three, Kirkland was clearly tired and Alvarez seemed to be wearing down. Both fighters dug deep. A right uppercut put James on the canvas at the 1:50 mark. He rose. There were more punches. Then Canelo wound up an overhand right from so far back that everyone in Houston except Kirkland could see it coming. The blow landed flush on James’s jaw and knocked him out.

Last week, Evander Holyfield complained, “I’ve attended the three biggest fights of the year so far: Deontay Wilder vs. Bermane Stiverne, Wladimir Klitschko vs. Bryant Jennings, and now Mayweather vs. Pacquiao. And you know what I’ve seen? Not much boxing. In 36 total rounds, I saw zero knockdowns. I saw a lot of holding and hugging and a lot of running. I saw three 12-round unanimous decisions. What I didn’t see were punches being thrown and landed. No fighter in any of the three fights was ever threatened or even in trouble. I didn’t even see a fighter with a cut or a bruise after the fight. Everyone was just playing defense, trying not to get hit. How can you have a boxing match if guys aren’t throwing and landing punches? The answer is, you can’t.”

According to CompuBox, Alvarez outlanded Kirkland 87-to-41 over the course of three rounds with a 79-to-41 edge in power punches. That didn’t leave much room for jabs in the computation. Evander has been going to the wrong fights.

* * *

Six hours before Alvarez-Kirkland, Hildago, Texas (300 miles southwest of Houston) hosted a Premier Boxing champions doubleheader on CBS.

In the opening bout, England’s Jamie McDonnell (25-2, 12 KOs) survived a third-round knockdown to score a hard-fought 114-113, 114-113, 114-113 decision over Japan’s Tomoki Kameda (31-0, 19 KOs). The final round (when McDonnell dug deep and Kameda didn’t) was the difference.

But the real story of the evening was referee Laurence Cole and three judges, who administed a dose of Texas injustice to Scotsman Ricky Burns (37-4, 11 KOs) in his fight against local favorite Omar Figueroa (24-0, 18 KOs).

Prior to the bout, Figueroa (who was moving up from 135 pounds) showed a lack of professionalism by weighing in 1.5 pounds over the 140-pound contract weight. But the day’s most relevant number might have been ”22” (the number of miles that Figueroa lives from Hidalgo).

As early as round two, CBS commentators Mauro Ranallo, Paulie Malignaggi, and Virgil Hunter were commenting on Cole’s conduct of the proceedings.

“Cole has become a big factor in this fight,” Hunter noted. As the fight wore on, Virgil added, “Laurence Cole continues to pull Ricky Burns’s arm away [in clinches], putting him in a dangerous situation . . . Right now, you see Figueroa holding and hitting, and he’s not being warned. Let’s have a fair fight here.”

When Figueroa led with his head (which he did often), Cole warned Burns for pushing Omar’s head down.

“I don’t like that warning,” Malignaggi said on one such occasion. “I’d like to see Cole warn Figueroa as well.” After a similar warning later in the fight, Hunter objected, “You have a right to protect yourself. The head is a dangerous weapon.”

“He [Cole] continues to inject himself unnecessarily,” Ranallo opined.

In round eight, Cole deducted a point from Burns for “holding,” prompting Malignaggi to observe, “When both guys are jockeying for position like that, it’s not even holding.” In round eleven, Cole deducted another point from the Scotsman.

It was an exciting fight. Figueroa is a volume-punching, come-forward brawler, and Burns obliged him. But the bout was marred by the refereeing and also by the nagging suspicion that Ricky would be jobbed by the judges when it was over.

That’s what happened. I thought that, even with Cole’s intercession, Burns won. The judges ruled otherwise, scoring 117-109, 116-110, 116-110 in Figueroa’s favor. To say that Burns won only three or four rounds was frivolous.

It’s no accident that every time there’s questionable officiating in Texas, it favors the house fighter.

Figueroa is an exciting fighter. But he gets hit too much. If Omar faces a big puncher, not even Texas refereeing and judging will save him.

* * *

TruTV’s introductory boxing telecast on Friday, May 1, was lost in the frenzy surrounding Mayweather-Pacquiao. Its second telecast took place on May 8.

In the opening bout, Seanie Monaghan (23-0, 15 KOs) took on Brazil’s Cleiton Conceicao (20-6-2, 16 KOs).

Looking beneath the surface of Conceicao’s record, the last man he beat had 36 losses and had been knocked out eight times in a row. The eight men Cleiton defeated before that had a composite ring record of 8 wins, 64 losses, and 1 draw. He’d been brought to the Prudential Center in Newark on the assumption that he’d take punishment without dishing out too much.

Monaghan scored effectively to the body in the early going. But Seanie gets hit a lot, and Friday night was no exception. He was cut early over his right eye, which was closed by the end of the fight. And he faded late, which is uncharacteristic of him. A flurry of punches in round nine, starting with an overhand right to the ear, put him in a bit of trouble. But he pounded out a 99-91, 98-92, 98-92 decision.

The main event matched Glen Tapia (23-1, 15 KOs) against Frenchman Michel Soro (25-1, 15 KOs).

Seventeen months ago, Tapia suffered a brutal knockout loss at the hands of James Kirkland. He was put in soft in his next three outings (as had been the case in most of his outings before the Kirkland fight).

Soro had won all 25 of his fights contested on French soil and neither of the two fights contested away from home. That changed in round four, when an explosion of punches beginning with a solid right hand put Tapia out on his feet, forcing referee David Fields to stop the fight.

Ray Mancini’s expert commentary was a plus throughout the telecast.

* * *

When Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquio met in the ring on May 2, “those in attendance and the millions of people watching around the world” knew that something was wrong. Michael Buffer (the real “TBE”) could barely talk.

The promotion of Mayweather-Pacquiao was marked by turf wars at every turn. The division of ring announcing duties was no exception. Buffer is identified with HBO. Jimmy Lennon is Showtime’s guy. After extensive negotiation, a narrative was scripted that divided announcing duties between them as evenly as possible.

Then, on the morning of the fight, Buffer woke up and his voice was gone. Too many interviews during the week had robbed him of his magical powers.

The original plan had been for Buffer to open the show by welcoming viewers at the start of the pay-per-view telecast. He’d also been slated to read the introductions and results for Vasyl Lomachenko vs. Gamalier Rodriguez. Those chores were reassigned to Lennon.

Meanwhile, Michael spent the day drinking tea with honey and communicating by email only. By fight night, his voice had recovered to the point where he was able to introduce the Filipino national anthem, call Manny Pacquiao to the ring, and intone his iconic, “Let’s get ready to rumble!”

But his voice was noticeably hoarse.

Michael Buffer without his voice is like a fighter with a torn rotator cuff.

Thomas Hauser can be reached by email at thauser@rcn.com. His most recent book – Thomas Hauser on Boxing- was published by the University of Arkansas Press.

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Thomas Hauser

Thomas Hauser is the author of 52 books. In 2005, he was honored by the Boxing Writers Association of America, which bestowed the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism upon him. He was the first Internet writer ever to receive that award. In 2019, Hauser was chosen for boxing's highest honor: induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Lennox Lewis has observed, “A hundred years from now, if people want to learn about boxing in this era, they’ll read Thomas Hauser.”

Avila Perspective, Chap. 322: Super Welter Week in SoCal

Published

10 hours ago

April 18, 2025

David A. Avila

Avila-Perspective-Chap-322-Super-Welter-Week-in-SoCal

Two below-the-radar super welterweight stars show off their skills this weekend from different parts of Southern California.

One in particular, Charles Conwell, co-headlines a show in Oceanside against a hard-hitting Mexican while another super welter star Sadriddin Akhmedov faces another Mexican hitter in Commerce.

Take your pick.

The super welterweight division is loaded with talent at the moment. If Terence Crawford remained in the division he would be at the top of the class, but he is moving up several weight divisions.

Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) faces Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs) a tall knockout puncher from Los Mochis at the Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, Calif. on Saturday April 19. DAZN will stream the Golden Boy Promotions card that also features undisputed flyweight champion Gabriela Fundora. We’ll get to her later.

Conwell might be the best super welterweight out there aside from the big dogs like Vergil Ortiz, Serhii Bohachuk and Sebastian Fundora.

If you are not familiar with Conwell he comes from Cleveland, Ohio and is one of those fighters that other fighters know about. He is good.

He has the James “Lights Out” Toney kind of in-your-face-style where he anchors down and slowly deciphers the opponent’s tools and then takes them away piece by piece. Usually it’s systematic destruction. The kind you see when a skyscraper goes down floor by floor until it’s smoking rubble.

During the Covid days Conwell fought two highly touted undefeated super welters in Wendy Toussaint and Madiyar Ashkeyev. He stopped them both and suddenly was the boogie man of the super welterweight division.

Conwell will be facing Mexico’s taller Garcia who likes to trade blows as most Mexican fighters prefer, especially those from Sinaloa. These guys will be firing H bombs early.

Fundora

Co-headlining the Golden Boy card is Gabriela Fundora (15-0, 7 KOs) the undisputed flyweight champion of the world. She has all the belts and Mexico’s Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1, 3 KOs) wants them.

Gabriela Fundora is the sister of Sebastian Fundora who holds the men’s WBC and WBO super welterweight world titles. Both are tall southpaws with power in each hand to protect the belts they accumulated.

Six months ago, Fundora met Argentina’s Gabriela Alaniz in Las Vegas to determine the undisputed flyweight champion. The much shorter Alaniz tried valiantly to scrap with Fundora and ran into a couple of rocket left hands.

Mexico’s Badillo is an undefeated flyweight from Mexico City who has battled against fellow Mexicans for years. She has fought one world champion in Asley Gonzalez the current super flyweight world titlist. They met years ago with Badillo coming out on top.

Does Badillo have the skill to deal with the taller and hard-hitting Fundora?

When a fighter has a six-inch height advantage like Fundora, it is almost impossible to out-maneuver especially in two-minute rounds. Ask Alaniz who was nearly decapitated when she tried.

This will be Badillo’s first pro fight outside of Mexico.

Commerce Casino

Kazakhstan’s Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0, 13 KOs) is another dangerous punching super welterweight headlining a 360 Promotions card against Mexico’s Elias Espadas (23-6, 16 KOs) on Saturday at the Commerce Casino.

UFC Fight Pass will stream the 360 Promotions card of about eight bouts.

Akhmedov is another Kazakh puncher similar to the great Gennady “GGG” Golovkin who terrorized the middleweight division for a decade. He doesn’t have the same polish or dexterity but doesn’t lack pure punching power.

It’s another test for the super welterweight who is looking to move up the ladder in the very crowded 154-pound weight division. 360 Promotions already has a top contender in Ukraine’s Serhii Bohachuk who nearly defeated Vergil Ortiz a year ago.

Could Bohachuk and Akhmedov fight each other if nothing else materializes?

That’s a question for another day.

Fights to Watch

Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. Charles Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) vs. Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs); Gabriela Fundora (15-0) vs Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1).

Sat. UFC Fight Pass 6 p.m. Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0) vs Elias Espadas (23-6).

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TSS Salutes Thomas Hauser and his Bernie Award Cohorts

Published

2 days ago

April 16, 2025

TSS Press

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The Boxing Writers Association of America has announced the winners of its annual Bernie Awards competition. The awards, named in honor of former five-time BWAA president and frequent TSS contributor Bernard Fernandez, recognize outstanding writing in six categories as represented by stories published the previous year.

Over the years, this venerable website has produced a host of Bernie Award winners. In 2024, Thomas Hauser kept the tradition alive. A story by Hauser that appeared in these pages finished first in the category “Boxing News Story.” Titled “Ryan Garcia and the New York State Athletic Commission,” the story was published on June 23. You can read it HERE.

Hauser also finished first in the category of “Investigative Reporting” for “The Death of Ardi Ndembo,” a story that ran in the (London) Guardian. (Note: Hauser has owned this category. This is his 11^th first place finish for “Investigative Reporting”.)

Thomas Hauser, who entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the class of 2019, was honored at last year’s BWAA awards dinner with the A.J. Leibling Award for Outstanding Boxing Writing. The list of previous winners includes such noted authors as W.C. Heinz, Budd Schulberg, Pete Hamill, and George Plimpton, to name just a few.

The Leibling Award is now issued intermittently. The most recent honorees prior to Hauser were Joyce Carol Oates (2015) and Randy Roberts (2019).

Roberts, a Distinguished Professor of History at Purdue University, was tabbed to write the Hauser/Leibling Award story for the glossy magazine for BWAA members published in conjunction with the organization’s annual banquet. Regarding Hauser’s most well-known book, his Muhammad Ali biography, Roberts wrote, “It is nearly impossible to overestimate the importance of the book to our understanding of Ali and his times.” An earlier book by Hauser, “The Black Lights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing,” garnered this accolade: “Anyone who wants to understand boxing today should begin by reading ‘The Black Lights’.”

A panel of six judges determined the Bernie Award winners for stories published in 2024. The stories they evaluated were stripped of their bylines and other identifying marks including the publication or website for which the story was written.

Other winners:

Boxing Event Coverage: Tris Dixon

Boxing Column: Kieran Mulvaney

Boxing Feature (Over 1,500 Words): Lance Pugmire

Boxing Feature (Under 1,500 Words): Chris Mannix

The Dixon, Mulvaney, and Pugmire stories appeared in Boxing Scene; the Mannix story in Sports Illustrated.

The Bernie Award recipients will be honored at the forthcoming BWAA dinner on April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in the heart of Times Square. (For more information, visit the BWAA website). Two days after the dinner, an historic boxing tripleheader will be held in Times Square, the logistics of which should be quite interesting. Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney, and Teofimo Lopez share top billing.

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Mekhrubon Sanginov, whose Heroism Nearly Proved Fatal, Returns on Saturday

Published

3 days ago

April 15, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Mekhrubon-Sanginov-whose-Heroism-Nearly-Proved-Fatal-Returns-on-Saturday

To say that Mekhrubon Sanginov is excited to resume his boxing career would be a great understatement. Sanginov, ranked #9 by the WBA at 154 pounds before his hiatus, last fought on July 8, 2022.

He was in great form before his extended leave, having scored four straight fast knockouts, advancing his record to 13-0-1. Had he remained in Las Vegas, where he had settled after his fifth pro fight, his career may have continued on an upward trajectory, but a trip to his hometown of Dushanbe, Tajikistan, turned everything haywire. A run-in with a knife-wielding bully nearly cost him his life, stalling his career for nearly three full years.

Sanginov was exiting a restaurant in Dushanbe when he saw a man, plainly intoxicated, harassing another man, an innocent bystander. Mekhrubon intervened and was stabbed several times with a long knife. One of the puncture wounds came perilously close to puncturing his heart.

“After he stabbed me, I ran after him and hit him and caught him to hold for the police,” recollects Sanginov. “There was a lot of confusion when the police arrived. At first, the police were not certain what had happened.

“By the time I got to the hospital, I had lost two liters of blood, or so I was told. After I was patched up, one of the surgeons said to me, ‘Give thanks to God because he gave you a second life.’ It is like I was born a second time.”

“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have happened in any city,” he adds. (A story about the incident on another boxing site elicited this comment from a reader: “Good man right there. World would be a better place if more folk were willing to step up when it counts.”)

Sanginov first laced on a pair of gloves at age 10 and was purportedly 105-14 as an amateur. Growing up, the boxer he most admired was Roberto Duran. “Muhammad Ali will always be the greatest and [Marvin] Hagler was great too, but Duran was always my favorite,” he says.

During his absence from the ring, Sanginov married a girl from Tajikistan and became a father. His son Makhmud was born in Las Vegas and has dual citizenship. “Ideally,” he says, “I would like to have three more children. Two more boys and the last one a daughter.”

He also put on a great deal of weight. When he returned to the gym, his trainer Bones Adams was looking at a cruiserweight. But gradually the weight came off – “I had to give up one of my hobbies; I love to eat,” he says – and he will be resuming his career at 154. “Although I am the same weight as before, I feel stronger now. Before I was more of a boy, now I am a full-grown man,” says Sanginov who turned 29 in February.

He has a lot of rust to shed. Because of all those early knockouts, he has answered the bell for only eight rounds in the last four years. Concordantly, his comeback fight on Saturday could be described as a soft re-awakening. Sanginov’s opponent Mahonri Montes, an 18-year pro from Mexico, has a decent record (36-10-2, 25 KOs) but has been relatively inactive and is only 1-3-1 in his last five. Their match at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, California, is slated for eight rounds.

On May 10, Ardreal Holmes (17-0) faces Erickson Lubin (26-2) on a ProBox card in Kissimmee, Florida. It’s an IBF super welterweight title eliminator, meaning that the winner (in theory) will proceed directly to a world title fight.

Sanginov will be watching closely. He and Holmes were scheduled to meet in March of 2022 in the main event of a ShoBox card on Showtime. That match fell out when Sanginov suffered an ankle injury in sparring.

If not for a twist of fate, that may have been Mekhrubon Sanginov in that IBF eliminator, rather than Ardreal Holmes. We will never know, but one thing we do know is that Mekhrubon’s world title aspirations were too strong to be ruined by a knife-wielding bully.

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