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Where Boxing and Baseball Entwine
There is a certain kind of poetry found in boxing that other sports simply cannot match. It is fitting, perhaps, that one has such a difficult time in putting a finger to exactly what makes it that way. Boxing is the most violent of all sports. There is an ugly grimness in it that would lead many to find little to no beauty within. But followers of the sport know otherwise. Despite everything wrong about it, and despite the shady characters within it, people who prosper by duping both fighters and fans out of every possible cent they can lay their greedy fingers on, boxing is beautiful.
Tragic? Yes. Dysfunctional? Absolutely. But there is more Truth and Beauty found in boxing than just about any other thing in the world.
No other sport quite compares, but if there is one, it must be baseball. Think about. What other sport is romanticized more than boxing and baseball? What other sport reveres its history as much? What other sport has in its history great writers and artists and song makers creating celebrated works of art like boxing and baseball have?
Yet television killed them both.
There were no more popular sports than boxing and baseball during the latter half of the 19th century and the early part of the next. The first national celebrity sporting figure was heavyweight champion John L. Sullivan in the 1880s. He was also the first American athlete to earn over one million dollars. By the 1920s, heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey and baseball slugger Babe Ruth were the most popular and prestigious men in the entire world. No sport meant more than boxing and baseball.
Thomas Hauser described the two men âwho bestrode it allâ in the 1920s for SecondsOut.com: âIn the ring, Dempsey attacked with unrelenting ferocity. Ruth swung for the fences every time he stepped to the plate. Dempsey fought like Ruth played baseball, and Ruth played baseball like Dempsey fought. Millions of Americans thrilled to their exploits as they led the way to a previously unimaginable commercialization of sports. At decadeâs end, Ruth signed a contract that paid him $80,000 a year. When asked if it was appropriate for him to make more money than the president of the United States, The Babe famously replied, âWhy not? I had a better year than he did.â Dempsey, by then, had made ten times the presidentâs annual salary for one nightâs work.â
As also noted by Hauser, the peak of perhaps both sports also attracted some of the greatest writing talent ever seen. This âgolden age of sportswritingâ included âGrantland Rice, Damon Runyan, Ring Lardner, Heywood Broun, Hype Igoe, and Westbrook Peglerâ among many others.
But the popularity of both sports has declined since the invention of the television in the 1920s and its rise to becoming the most popular medium in the 1950s. While baseball has remained more mainstream than boxing during that timeframe, it is no longer considered a national pastime. Its ability to remain more relevant to the masses is likely less due to the sport itself and more to the governing structure of it. Where Major League Baseball has enjoyed what essentially boils down to a monopoly over the sport in America, boxing has continued on as a band of competing promotional companies continually trying to usurp and outdo each other.
Neither boxing nor baseball are television friendly sports. Theyâre both long and slow. Both hearken back to a time when watchers of sport had longer attention spans and enjoyed subtle nuances of things. Where todayâs generation of know-nothings see two men punching each other, boxing fans see an entire language of pugilism that remains indecipherable to mainstream consumers. There are feints, parries and footwork. These small things can appear to be nothing to the untrained eye, but fight fans see a subject that can truly never be studied enough to be fully mastered. Baseball fans see the same. Where one might see a man throwing a ball passed another who tries to hit it with a big, wooden stick, baseball fans attach great significance to the smallest of things in their sport, almost imperceptible but still substantial singularities which affect each momentâs outcome.
Yet the two fan bases could not be more different. That wasnât driven home more than when Saul âCaneloâ Alvarez and James Kirkland attended the Houston Astros vs. Texas Rangers baseball game on Wednesday night preceding their Saturday night showdown at Minute Maid Park in Houston. Nary an applause was given when the two men walked out to the mound to deliver their ceremonial first pitches. While the fighters, particularly Alvarez, were rock stars just a few moments earlier during their fight week workouts which were open to the public, they were nobodies when sauntering out in front of the baseball crowd.
Yet there was a place where boxing and baseball still entwined. From within the dugouts emerged baseball players, both from the Astros and the visiting Rangers. These men, adored by their culture for being the same types of stars and celebrities Canelo and Kirkland are in our world, were smitten by the two fighters who would do battle on that very field later in the week. There were pictures and autographs and selfies. There were smiles and hugs and laughs. The boxers and baseball players loved each other.
It was a family reunion of sorts. Two sports forever entwined with nothing alike about them except maybe everything that really matters.
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R.I.P. IBF founder Bob Lee who was Banished from Boxing by the FBI
âThe image some people have of me is disappointing,â said Bob Lee in a 2006 interview, âbut I also feel I had a positive impact on the sportâŠâ
Lee, the founder of the International Boxing Federation who died yesterday (Sunday, March 24) at age 91, spoke those words to Philadelphia Daily News boxing writer Bernard Fernandez who was the first person to interview him when he emerged from a federal prison in 2006. Lee served 22 months on charges that included racketeering, money laundering, and tax evasion.
Born and raised in northern New Jersey and a lifelong resident of the Garden State, Lee, a former police detective, founded the International Boxing Federation (henceforth IBF) in 1983 after a failed bid to win the presidency of the World Boxing Association. At the time, there were only two relevant sanctioning bodies, the WBA, then headquartered in Venezuela, and the WBC, headquartered in Mexico. Both organizations were charged with favoring boxers from Spanish-speaking countries in their ratings at the expense of boxers from the United States.
Bob Leeâs brainchild, whose stated mission was to rectify that injustice, achieved instant credibility when Marvin Hagler and Larry Holmes turned their back on the established organizations. Haglerâs 1983 bout with Wilford Scypion and Holmesâ 1984 match with Bonecrusher Smith were world title fights sanctioned exclusively by the IBF, the last of the three extant organizations to do away with 15-round title fights.
Leeâs world was rocked in November of 1999 when a federal grand jury handed down an indictment that accused him and three IBF officials, including his son Robert W. âRobbyâ Lee Jr., of taking bribes from promoters and managers in return for higher rankings. The FBI, after a two-year investigation, concluded that $338,000 was paid over a 13-year period by individuals representing 23 boxers.
The governmentâs key witness was C. Douglas Beavers, the longtime chairman of the IBF ratings committee who wore a wire as a government informant in return for immunity and provided video-tape evidence of a $5000 payout in a seedy Virginia motel room. Promoters Bob Arum and Cedric Kushner both testified that they gave the IBF $100,000 to get the organizationâs seal of approval for a match between heavyweight champion George Foreman and Axel Schulz (Arum asserted that he paid the money through a middleman, Stan Hoffman). In return, the IBF gave Schulz a âspecial exemptionâ to its rules, allowing the German to bypass Michael Moorer who had a rematch clause that would never be honored. (In a sworn deposition, Big George testified that he had no knowledge of any kickback).
After a long-drawn-out trial that consumed four months including 15 days of jury deliberations, Bob Lee was acquitted on all but six of 32 counts. His son, charged with nine counts, was acquitted on all nine. The jury simply did not trust the veracity of many that testified for the prosecution. (No surprise there; after all, they were boxing people.) But neither did the jury buy into the argument that whatever money Lee received was in the form of gifts and gratuities, a common business practice.
The IBF was run by a court-appointed overseer from January of 2000 until the fall of 2003. Under its current head, Daryl Peoples, who came up from the ranks, assuming the presidency in 2010, the IBF has stayed out of the crosshairs of federal prosecutors.
As part of his sentence, Bob Lee was prohibited from having any further dealings with boxing and that would have included buying a ticket to sit in the cheap seats at a boxing card. This was adding insult to injury as Leeâs passion for boxing ran deep. As a boy working as a caddy at a New Jersey golf course, he had met Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson, two of the proudest moments of his life.
As for his contributions to the sport, Lee had this to say in his post-prison talk with Bernard Fernandez: âWe instituted the 168-pound [super middleweight] weight class. We took measures to reduce the incidence of eye injuries in boxing. We changed the weigh-in from the day of the fight to the day before, which prevented fighters from entering the ring so dehydrated that they were putting themselves at risk. All these things, and more, were tremendously beneficial to boxing. Iâm very proud of all that we accomplished.â
Bob Lee was a tough old bird. Diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in 1986, he was insulin-dependent for much of his adult life and yet he lived into his nineties. Although his coloration as a shakedown artist is a stain that will never go away, many people will tell you that, on balance, he was a good man whose lapses ought not define him.
Thatâs not for us to judge. We send our condolences to his loved ones. May he rest in peace.
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Australiaâs Nikita Tszyu Stands Poised to Escape the Long Shadow of His Brother
They held a confab for the boxing media last week at the spacious Las Vegas gym where WBO super welterweight champion Tim Tszyu has been training for his forthcoming match with Sebastian Fundora. Tim was there, of course, as were many of the fighters in the supporting bouts plus Timâs younger brother Nikita who was inconspicuous in this gathering.
Nikita Tszyu isnât on Saturdayâs card and so was never spotlighted, but itâs likely that most of the media-types there knew nothing about him. Had they been Aussies, he wouldn’t have been able to blend into the scenery as the Sydneysider is already a major sports personality in the Land Down Under. More than that, he is seemingly on pace to become as big a star as his older brother who has been called the face of boxing in Australia.
In his last start, Nikita wrested the Australian 154-pound title from previously undefeated (10-0) Dylan Biggs. Their bout in the Australian harbor city of Newcastle headlined a pay-per-view telecast.
Nikita was down in the first 45 seconds of the contest and was buzzed in the third, but had Biggs in dire straits in the fourth and ended matters in the next frame with a wicked left hook to the liver. Biggs somehow made it to his feet, but the bout was waived off seconds later as Biggsâ corner was throwing in the towel.
It improved Nikitaâs record to 8-0 (7 KOs) and burnished the reputation of the Tszyu dynasty. Collectively, the three Tszyuâs â his Hall of Fame father Kostya, his bother Tim and Nikita â are 48-0 in Australian rings.
Outside the squared circle, Nikita Tszyu, who is 26 years old and looks younger, comes across as thoroughly unspoiled. Talking with him, what started as a formal interview quickly became a relaxed chat between two old souls (as Nikita described himself) enjoying each others company. And as prizefighters go, he sure is different. A college grad, Nikita cited gardening, of all things, when we inquired if he had any hobbies.
As amateurs, Nikita had a deeper background and was more decorated than Tim. But in 2017, he turned his back on boxing to pursue a degree in architecture. He was away from boxing for five years before deciding to give the sport another fling.
âI wanted to be the first person in my family to be smart,â he says tongue-in-cheek when asked how he could abandon a sport that was seemingly in his blood. âMy mom wanted one of us to get a college degree,â he says, elaborating. âWhen it wasnât going to work out for Tim, it fell on my shoulders.â
As is well known, Nikitaâs parents divorced (Nikita was then just starting high school) and his dad then returned to his native Russia and started a new family. But the brothers and their father remain on cordial terms â they speak on the phone periodically â and they are close to Kostyaâs parents (their paternal grandparents) who live near Nikita in the Sydney area and are currently watching Nikitaâs three dogs, a husky, a French Bulldog, and a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. âI canât imagine a life without them,â says Nikita who, unlike his brother, has no special lady living under his roof.
The family tie extends to the brothersâ trainer Igor Goloubev who is married to their aunt (Kostyaâs sister). Uncle Igor, a training partner of Kostya Tszyu in the old days, came to Sydney in 1997 with a touring Russian amateur team and, unlike the famous boxer, never left.
During the lull between the two generations of fighting Tszyus, Igor Goloubev founded a construction company that he still owns. While working for an architectural firm (working remotely because of Covid), Nikita was able to work part-time for his uncle which was good hands-on experience for a future architect.
When Goloubev counsels one of the brothers between rounds, the old becomes new again and this blast from the past doesnât stop there. The brothers are managed by Newcastle NSW businessman Glen Jennings who formerly managed Kostya, widely considered one of the two or three best junior welterweights of all time. (Jennings says that as a boxer Nikita is more like his dad whereas Tim is more of a pressure fighter.)
This is Nikita Tszyuâs second trip to Las Vegas. He was here last year when Tim was preparing for a match with Jermell Charlo. When that match fell out, Nikita used the occasion for a little holiday, the highlight of which was a hike through Northern Californiaâs Redwood Forest, home to the worldâs tallest trees.
âYour national parks are the coolest things about America,â he says. As for the food? âToo much fat,â he says, wrinkling his nose, but thatâs a moot point as Team Tszyu now travels with its own chef.
Nikita Tszyu will defend his Australian title on April 24th. At this writing, the opponent is uncertain. Three leading candidates fell by the wayside, two because they lost a fight they were supposed to win, ruining their credibility, and another because he got injured. Finding good opponents may prove to be a recurrent hassle in part because Nikita, unlike his brother, is a southpaw.
Coming up the ladder, Tim Tszyu looked forward to fighting at the MGM Grand where his father won his first title (TKO 6 over Jake Rodriguez in 1995) and had one of his most memorable fights, a second-round stoppage of Zab Judah in 2001. The T-Mobile Arena didnât exist back then, but sits on MGM Grand property, so Saturdayâs fight is a dream come true for the older Tszyu brother.
Looking down the road, itâs easy to envision Nikita becoming a headline attraction here too.
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Dalton Smith KOs Jose Zepeda and Sandy Ryan Stops Terri Harper in England
Dalton Smith KOs Jose Zepeda and Sandy Ryan Stops Terri Harper in England
England showed off its talent in Sheffield.
Super lightweight prospect Dalton Smith advanced into the championship level and Sandy Ryan proved to be not just another world titlist on Saturday.
Dalton Smith (16-0, 12 KOs) faced the venomous punching power of Jose âChonâ Zepeda (37-5, 28 KOs) and eliminated him with a body shot knockout that left the world title challenger gasping for air at Sheffield Arena in Sheffield, England.
âI had to be on my game. He (Zepeda) puts people to sleep,â said Smith.
If any questions existed on Smithâs ability to compete at the championship level, the 27-year-old answered emphatically with a clinical and professional-style win.
Smith walked into the prize ring realizing that southpaw slugger Zepeda could end the night with a single punch. He carefully measured the California-based fighterâs movements and punching power before stepping on the gas from the second round on.
âHeâs a great fighter,â explained Smith of Zepeda. âThatâs what made me train harder.â
During the first several rounds the two hard-hitting punchers were able to score. Zepeda clipped Smith with quick rights and occasional lefts but discovered that the British fighter has a chin. That seemed to allow Smith to open-up slightly more with one-two combinations.
After Smith gained serious momentum in the third and fourth rounds, Zepeda shortened up his stride and looked to put on more pressure. In the fifth round Zepeda moved closer into firing range and ran into a right cross to the belly that took the strength out of his legs. Down went Zepeda for the count at 1:25 of the fifth round.
âI was hitting him with clean shots and it wasnât doing anything,â said Smith of his head attack.
Apparently, the body shot was the answer.
Sandy Ryan Wins Battle of Champions
WBO welterweight titlist Sandy Ryan won the battle between British champions with a pile-driving stoppage of Terri Harper who, after dropping down a weight division but was unable to be competitive.
Ryan (7-1-1, 3 KOs) walked into enemy territory and quieted the pro-Harper (14-2-2, 6 KOs) crowd with a riveting attack at Sheffield Arena. There was no stopping her on this night.
âIâm just happy,â said Ryan, 30, of Derby England.
After spending months in Las Vegas, Nevada living and training away from her home in England, the tall slender fighter Ryan finally was able to lure a fellow British world champion in the boxing ring.
âI was away from family and friends for so long,â Ryan said.
A close first round between the two female champions saw Ryan open up the second round behind a riveting left jab and body shots that made Harper hesitant and gun shy to counter.
Ryan seemed to sense early that she was in control and opened up with five- and six-punch combinations. And when Harper retaliated, Ryan returned fire again almost daring her rival to engage in a free-for-all.
Harper clinched several times in the third round to stymie Ryanâs constant attack, but it was not enough. The WBO titlist seemed even more eager to win by knockout and opened up with little concern of Harperâs counters.
In the fifth round it was obvious that Ryan was in complete control, the only question was if she could maintain the frenetic pace. Again, she opened up with punishing combinations as Harper looked for a solution. Instead, rights and lefts pummeled the super welterweight titlist until the end of the round.
Harperâs corner decided to end the fight, Referee Marcus McDonnell declared Ryan the winner at the end of the fifth round by technical knockout.
âI felt her fading,â said Ryan.
The win by Ryan sets her up for a rematch against Jessica McCaskill who holds the WBA and WBC welterweight titles. Their first encounter ended in a split draw after 10 rounds last September in Orlando, Florida.
Ryan expressed a desire to face any champion.
âAny big fight. All the big names,â Ryan said.
Other Results
Ishmael Davis (13-0) defeated Troy Williamson (20-3-1) by unanimous decision after 12 rounds for a regional middleweight title.
James Flint (14-1-2) handed Campbell Hatton (14-1) fis first defeat as a pro by unanimous decision after 10 rounds in a super lightweight match.
Photo credit: Mark Robinson / Matchroom
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