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“There Was Ill Advised Optimism In the Air:” Boxing Back To Boston

Boxing back in Beantown, how bout that..
Beantown, dumb tag for the town but I think I’ve earned the right to use it, being that I grew up in the area.
Nah, this silly accent isn’t from living in NY since 1999, it’s a hybrid, and you’ll hear the “chowdah” dropped R from me now and again.
Big card, not A grade big, but big nevertheless on Saturday, in Boston, and good for Boston-area boxing fans.
They’ve been left to their own devices, as boxing in New England has dwindled over the past few decades. Really, aside from the occasional athlete exploding, they’d maybe get like two a decade, it oftentimes really isn’t getting above the “dwindling” zone…
I wasn’t able to soak up much in the way of A or even B plus grade action when I was making my bones as a fightwriter, hitting the Roxy for Richie “Used Cars” Cappiello shows, and filing recaps to Boxing Illustrated (or was it Digest, I guess that depended whether the editor was Herb Goldman, or Greg Juckett, or Ken Kolasinski, or Sean Sullivan). Hey, this is life, I didn’t see a contract upon exiting the womb that all would be swell and entrancing 24-7, so I took what I could get, and enjoyed the characters and the action in 1995, 1996, and beyond…
So what if the action featured too many guys with 4-44 records, from “designated loser” towns, like Springfield, Mass., who came to the ring wearing adidas hi-tops. I developed a fondness for the out of towners, the Dominic Monacos and the Jose Williams’—dude, c’mon, really, was his name REALLY Jose Williams—whose specialty was 1): losing to the local kid with any smidge of promise, or an ability to put butts in seats, butts which would buy beer, and 2): sitting on the lowest rung rope during a bout, like he was on the toilet, and catapulting upwards, wherein he would eat a punch, and then dip down again. No coincidence, maybe, that I live in Brooklyn and you guessed it, where did the record padders often hail from? You guessed it…
These guys were clearly in it for the money, and even at a non-advanced age or degree of maturity, I respected their traveling salesman ethos, their product being their willingness to not go all out, and make the local kid look good, and be able to pad his record. They’d occasionaly throw a shoeshine, or maybe an Ali shuffle, something that would be the pugilistic equivalent of a wink and a nod, to tell the smarts in the crowd that if they tried the whole time, the local kid would not neccessarily be leaving without a dented chin and with another W.
The area would get the occasional boost, an infection of excitement, when a Peter McNeeley would get maneuvered onto a big stage, or a Jawny Ruiz, with sidekick the ever combustible and charismatic maniac Norman Stone oscillating between hearty bouts of bonhomie and eruptions which portended a stroke which God bless his pulsating mass of tensed nerve endings he calls a soul hasn’t occured, would over-achieve his way onto those same big stages…or a gawky colt with some strength of body and will like a Richie LaMontagne would tease the locals into believing he had a shot at being a contender, being somebody and get a crack on a USA card, or what have you…
Through it all, I’d be more than happy to go home reeking of George Kimballs’ Luckys, when I’d be fortunate enough to get a seat next to him, and maybe hear Stoney chew him out, call him a fat bastard Cyclops emeffer for some candid thing he had written in the Sunday Herald the week before….and maybe hear a tidbit I’d tuck away and still recall, as when he told me if I was writing things that didn’t make someone mad occasionally, then I wasn’t doing my job properly.
Yeah, you covered the Boston boxing beat, and you had to make do with an appreciation of characters, rather than premier talents placed in marquee situations. That was fine with me, I generally prefer the characters, and their rough edges and offbeat personas, I enjoy the drums they beat to the more refined singsong of the more skilled folk who advertise their douchiness without reserve, and advertise to their rafters their fabulousness. Yeah, give me a Vecchione over a Mayweather any day of any week, because I can identify with the one who cut and scratched and clawed and BS’d some and did so charmingly, with a rogueish flair that had you liking him even if he sold you a lemon of a LeBaron when he told you that this heavyweight he was helming had the goods to hit the big time. I admired, covering boxing in Boston in the mid 90s, optimism in the face of ample evidence to indicate that pessimism was the wiser path to take.
There was a lot of that ill-advised optimism in the air if you were covering the Boston boxing beat in the mid 90s, and before, and after, and that’s always the way it is in this sport, and one of the reasons why it is the sporting proxy for our existence as humans. Most of us are the record padders, taking gigs we couldn’t have imagined in more promising times, and doing the occasional Ali shuffle, sending that message to them, and to us, that given a different alignment of the stars, we’d be the local kid, a can’t miss talent on the star track.
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Featured Articles
Adelaida Ruiz and Fernando Vargas Jr Score KO Wins at Pechanga

Adelaida Ruiz and Fernando Vargas Jr Score KO Wins at Pechanga
TEMECULA, Ca.-After a long period of fighting out of the country, Adelaida Ruiz returned to Southern California and with her came hundreds of her ardent followers as she won by knockout over Mexico’s Maria Cecilia Roman on Friday.
Ruiz (14-0-1, 8 KOs) looked sharp and stepped in with a disciplined attack against Roman (17-8) who fought behind a peek-a-boo style throughout the fight. Ruiz fired away at openings with a measured attack in front of several thousand fans at Pechanga Arena on the MarvNation Promotions card.
Midway through the eight-round match Ruiz increased the tempo of the attack with blistering combinations to the body and head. During one of the combinations Ruiz connected with a left hook to Roman’s temple and down she went.
Roman beat the count, but Ruiz never slowed her attack and each round her blows seemed to increase with power, the impact of the punches resonating in the arena. The interim WBC super flyweight titlist, whose title was not at stake, seemed determined to win by knockout.
In the eighth and final round Ruiz staggered Roman with another left hook to the temple and that only sparked more punches from the Southern California fighter. She unloaded her bullet chambers and the referee decided to stop the action at 1:19 of the eighth round.
Other Bouts
Fernando Vargas Jr. (9-0) won the super middleweight contest by knockout when Heber Rondon (20-5) was unable to continue due to a shoulder injury at the end of the second round. Fans were displeased but it was not up to the fans.
Vargas showed patience against the veteran southpaw Rondon who showed some tricks in his bag. But after some exchanges in the second round it was a surprise to everyone in the arena when the referee signaled the fight was over at the end of the second round.
Undefeated Jonathan Lopez (11-0, 7 KOs) of Florida remained unblemished with a unanimous decision win over Mexico’s Eduardo Baez (21-5-2, 7 KOs) in a 10-round featherweight fight.
San Bernardino’s Lawrence King (13-1,11 KOs) faced veteran Mexican fighter Marco Reyes (37-10) and was able to use his speed and southpaw stance to win almost every round. But he had to work for it.
Reyes was able to avoid most of King’s attacks but in the sixth round after absorbing some heavy blows the Mexican fighter was unable to continue and the fight was stopped at the end of the sixth round for a knockout win by King.
In a super welterweight fight, Mario Ramos (11-0, 9 KOs) wore down Jesus Cruz (6-3) for three rounds with his left-handed assault and then lowered the boom with a non-stop barrage of lefts and rights. After nearly two-dozen nearly unanswered blows the referee stopped the battering at 2:09 of the fourth round.
Orlando Salgado (3-2) slugged it out with Squire Redfern (0-1) to win a super welterweight fight by decision after four back and forth rounds. Salgado connected with the bigger blows but never could stop Redfern from rallying round after round. All three judges scored in favor of Salgado.
A heavyweight battle saw Mike Diorio (1-5-1) win his first pro fight in out-punching debuting heavyweight Ian Morgan (0-1) after four rounds. Both fighters tired a bit but Diorio had a better idea of how to score and won by decision.
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Book Review
Reviews of Two Atypical Boxing Books: A ‘Thumbs Up’ and a ‘Thumbs Down’

Reviews of Two Atypical Boxing Books: A ‘Thumbs Up’ and a ‘Thumbs Down’
Jack Johnson sheared the world heavyweight title from Tommy Burns in 1908 and lost it to Jess Willard in 1915. Between these two poles he had nine ring engagements, none of which commanded much attention with one glaring exception. His 1910 fight in Reno with former title-holder James J. Jeffries stands as arguably the most sociologically significant sporting event in U.S. history.
Toby Smith, who wrote extensively about Johnny Tapia while working as a sports reporter for the Albuquerque Journal, exhumes one of these forgotten fights in his meticulously researched 2020 book “Crazy Fourth” (University of New Mexico Press), sub-titled “How Jack Johnson Kept His Heavyweight Title and Put Las Vegas, New Mexico on the Map.” With 30 chapters spread across 172 pages of text and 10 pages of illustrations, it’s an enjoyable read.
The July 4, 1912 fight wherein Jack Johnson defended his heavyweight title against Fireman Jim Flynn, was dreadful. For the nine rounds that it lasted, writes Smith, Johnson and Flynn resembled prize buffoons rather than prizefighters.
Johnson, who out-weighed Flynn by 20 pounds, toyed with the Fireman whenever the two weren’t locked in a clinch. The foul-filled fight ended when a police captain decided that he had seen enough and bounded into the ring followed by a phalanx of his lieutenants. “Las Vegas ‘Battle’ Worst in History of American Ring” read the headline in the next day’s Chicago Inter Ocean, an important newspaper.
The fight itself is of less interest to author Smith than the context. How odd that a world heavyweight title fight would be anchored in Las Vegas, New Mexico (roughly 700 miles from the other Las Vegas), a railroad town that in 1912 was home to about nine thousand people. The titles of two of the chapters, “Birth of a Debacle” (chapter 1) and “A Misbegotten Mess” (chapter 27) capture the gist.
Designed to boost the economy and give the city lasting prestige, the promotion was a colossal dud. Fewer than four thousand people attended the fight in an 18,000-seat makeshift wooden arena erected in the north end of town. The would-be grand spectacle was doomed when the Governor sought to have the fight banned by the legislature, giving the impression the fight would never come off, and it didn’t help that Johnson and Flynn had fought once before, clashing five years earlier in San Francisco. Johnson dominated that encounter before knocking Flynn out in the eleventh round.
“Crazy Fourth” reminded this reporter of two other books.
“White Hopes and Other Tigers,” by the great John Lardner, originally published by Lippincott in 1950, includes Lardner’s wonderfully droll New Yorker essay on the 1923 fight between Jack Dempsey and Tommy Gibbons in Shelby, Montana, an ill-conceived promotion that virtually bankrupted the entire community. In the same vein, although more straightforward, is Bruce J. Evensen’s “When Dempsey Fought Tunney: Hokum, Heroes, and Storytelling in the Jazz Age.”
Johnson-Flynn II was suffused with hokum. Energetic press agent H.W. Lanigan cranked out dozens of puff pieces under multiple bylines for out-of-town papers in a futile attempt to build the event into a must-see attraction. His chief assistant Tommy Cannon, the ring announcer, had an interesting, if dubious, distinction. Cannon claimed to have copyrighted the term “squared circle.”
I found one little error in the book. The Ed Smith that refereed the Johnson-Flynn rematch and the Ed Smith that refereed the famously brutal 1910 fight between Battling Nelson and Ad Wolgast, were two different guys. (It pains me to note this, as I know another author who made the same mistake and I see him every morning when I look in the bathroom mirror.) But this is nitpicking. One doesn’t have to be a serious student of boxing history to enjoy “Crazy Fourth.”
Knock Out! The True Story of Emile Griffith by Reinhard Kleist
Let me digress before I even get started. Whenever I am in a library in the city where I reside, I wander over to the “GV” aisle and take a gander at the boxing offerings. If, perchance, there is a book there that I haven’t yet read, I reflexively snatch it up and take it home.
When I got home and riffed through the pages of this particular book, I was surprised to find that it was a comic book of sorts, one that I would classify as a graphic non-fiction novel.
Emile Griffith, as is now common knowledge, was gay, or at least bisexual. Reinhard Kleist, a longtime resident of Berlin, Germany, was drawn to him because of this facet of his being. Kleist makes this plain in the introduction: “Despite [Berlin] being one of the most tolerant cities in the world, I have suffered homophobic insults and threats while walking hand in hand down the street with my boyfriend.”
Born in the Virgin Islands, Emile Griffith came to New York City at age 17 and found work in the garment district as a shipping clerk for a company that manufactured women’s hats. The factory’s owner, Howard Albert, a former amateur boxer, saw something in Griffith that suggested to him that he had the makings of a top-notch boxer and he became his co-manager along with trainer Gil Glancy. Kleist informs us that in addition to being “one of the greatest boxers ever seen in the ring,” Griffith was an incredible hat-designer.
Griffith, who died at age 75 in 2013, is best remembered for his rubber match with Benny Paret, a fight at Madison Square Garden that was nationally televised on ABC. Paret left the ring in a coma and died 10 days later without regaining consciousness. At the weigh-in, Paret, a Cuban, had insulted Griffith with the Spanish slur comparable to “faggot.”
The fight – including its prelude and aftermath (Griffith suffered nightmares about it for the rest of his life) – is the focal point of several previous works about Emile Griffith; biographies, a prize-winning documentary, and even an opera that was recently performed at The Met, the crème de la crème of America’s grand opera houses. The fatal fight factors large here too.
During a 17-year career that began in 1958, Emile Griffith went to post 112 times, answering the bell for 1122 rounds, and won titles in three weight classes: 147, 154, and 160. At one point, he had a 17-2 record in world title fights (at a time when there were only two relevant sanctioning bodies) before losing his last five to finish 17-7. No boxer in history boxed more rounds in true title fights.
Griffith, who finished his career with a record of 85-24-2 with 23 KOs and 1 no-contest, entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the inaugural class of 1990. There is absolutely no question that he belongs there, but to rank him among the greatest of all time is perhaps a bit of a stretch. Regardless, I take umbrage with the sub-title. The “true story” of Emile Griffith cannot be capsulated in a book with such a narrow scope. Moreover, it is misclassified; it ought not have been shelved with other boxing books but in some other section of the library as this is less a story about a prizefighter than about a man who is forced to wear a mask, so to speak, as he navigates his way through a thorny, heteronormative society.
Graphic novels are a growing segment of the publishing industry. The genre is not my cup of tea, but to each his own.
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Bazinyan Overcomes Adversity; Skirts by Macias in Montreal

Camille Estephan, one of two prominent boxing promoters operating in Quebec, was back at his customary playpen tonight, The Montreal Casino, with an 8-bout card that aired in the U.S. on ESPN+. The featured bout pit Erik Bazinyan against Mexican globetrotter Jose de Jesus Macias in a super middleweight bout with two regional titles at stake. Bazinyan entered the contest undefeated (29-0, 21 KOs) and ranked #2 at 168 by the WBC, WBA, and WBO.
A member of the National Team of Armenia before moving with his parents to Quebec at age 16, Bazinyan figured to be too physical for Matias. He had launched his career as a light heavyweight whereas Matias had fought extensively as a welterweight. However, the battle-tested Macias (28-12-4) was no pushover. Indeed, he had the best round of the fight. It came in Round 7 when he hurt Bazinyan with a barrage of punches that left the Armenian on shaky legs. But Bazinyan weathered the storm and fought the spunky Macias on better-than-even terms in the homestretch to win a unanimous decision.
The judges were predisposed toward the “A side” and submitted cards of 98-92, 97-93, 97-93.
In his previous bout, Bazinyan was hard-pressed to turn away Alantez Fox. Tonight’s performance confirmed the suspicion that he isn’t as good as his record or his rating. He would be the underdog if matched against stablemate Christian Mbilli.
Co-Feature
In what stands as arguably the finest performance in his 14-year pro career, Calgary junior welterweight Steve Claggett dismantled Puerto Rico’s Alberto Machado, a former world title-holder at 130 pounds. Claggett had Machado on the canvas twice before the referee waived the fight off at the 2:29 mark of round three, the stoppage coming moments after the white towel of surrender was tossed from Machado’ corner. It was the sixth straight win inside the distance for the resurgent Claggett (35-7-2, 25 KOs) who was favored in the 3/1 range.
Claggett scored his first knockdown late in round two with a chopping left hook. The second knockdown came from a two-punch combo — a short right uppercut to the jaw that followed a hard left hook to the body. Machado, whose promoter of record is Miguel Cotto, falls to 23-4.
Claggett, who won an NABF belt, would welcome a fight with Rolly Romero. A more likely scenario finds him locking horns with undefeated Arnold Barboza, a Top Rank fighter.
Also…
Quebec southpaw Thomas Chabot remained undefeated with a harder-than expected and somewhat controversial 8-round split decision over 20-year-old Mexico City import Luis Bolanos. At the conclusion, Chabot, who improved to 9-0 (7), was more marked-up than his scrappy opponent who declined to 4-3-1. This was an entertaining fight between two high-volume punchers.
In a middleweight affair slated for six, Alexandre Gaumont improved to 8-0 (6 KOs) with a second round TKO over hapless Piotr Bis. The official time was 3:00.
A 37-year-old Pole making his North American debut, Bis (6-3-1) was on the canvas six times in all during the six minutes of action. There were two genuine knockdowns, the result of short uppercuts, two dubious knockdowns, a slip, and a push.
As an amateur, Gaumont reportedly knocked out half of his 24 opponents. This sloppy fight with Bis wasn’t of the sort from which Gaumont can gain anything useful, but he is a bright prospect who bears watching.
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