RINGSIDE REPORT: DeGale Betters Dirrell in Boston, Grabs Title

Published

10 years ago

May 24, 2015

Boxing is back in Boston and it’s not a moment too soon. In the past ten years, there have been only two significant fight cards held in the city and both were at the TD Boston Garden.

The UK’s Ricky Hatton defeated New Yorker Luis Collazo for the WBA welterweight title in 2006 and then two years ago, a successful pro-am show was put on there as well and featured Danny O’Connor in the main event against Derek Silveira in a regional battle.

Thanks to Al Haymon’s revolutionary Premier Champions (PBC) platform, the sweet science was in full effect at the Agganis Arena on Saturday afternoon, May 23 on the campus of Boston University.

Home to the BU Terriers college hockey team, the arena hosted an NBC televised card promoted by DiBella Entertainment and Murphy’s Boxing before a small but very enthusiastic crowd.

In the main event, James “Chunky” DeGale (seen above, after his win, in Freeman photo), 29, London, England, 21-1, 14 KOs, 167.2, fulfilled his obsessive dream of becoming the first Olympic Gold Medalist from Great Britain to win a “genuine” world title.

“I’m speechless,” the new champion told me after the fight. DeGale defeated American Olympic Bronze Medalist Andre Dirrell, 31, 24-2, 16 KOs, Flint, Michigan, 167.8, by unanimous decision to win the IBF super middleweight championship in a tactical but relatively entertaining affair. The Brit scored two knockdowns in the second round and used his superior boxing skills to outpoint his opponent over the distance.

“Dirrell showed a lot of heart like a true warrior,” said DeGale. “That second round knockdown was heavy,” DeGale said of the shot that dropped Dirrell. Dirrell had his moments but they were essentially given to him by DeGale in an attempt to set Dirrell up for more of the abuse he put on Dirrell in the second. When I asked DeGale if that was the case, the Londoner confirmed my assessment of his strategy. “Also, he’s such a good fighter, I couldn’t be careless and make too many mistakes because he’s dangerous with that left hand,” he said.

After a slow first round battle of jabs, traps, and counters, DeGale picked up the pace in the second round and dropped Dirrell hard with a smashing left cross to the face. Dirrell hit the mat flat but bounced up fast, only to get sent back down from a follow-up barrage. Dirrell got his legs back in the third but DeGale pinned him in a corner late in the round and hammered his exposed chin with another hard left hand. In the fourth, DeGale slowed his attack but landed a spearing right jab to the face of Dirrell, who struggled from the outside and clinched on the inside whenever DeGale pressed his advantage in close. As the rounds went on, DeGale showed the true essence of boxing. He hit more than he got hit. His defense was tight. His counters were on point. As chants of “Chunky, Chunky” broke out in the sixth, Dirrell looked like a beaten fighter, or at the very least, an extremely frustrated one.

In the seventh, eighth and ninth, DeGale motored around the ring looking to land his big left hand again as he did in the second round. Occasionally he’d plant his feet and let Dirrell tire himself out by punching wildly at his guard. In the tenth, Dirrell responded to “USA, USA” chants with two straight left hands to the chin of DeGale as “Chunky” backed up into the ropes. DeGale seized control in the championship rounds and outboxed Dirrell to punctuate his tactical victory by official scores of 117-109 and 114-112 twice.

From ringside, I scored it 116-110 in favor of DeGale, who told me he agreed with the 114-112 scores, but that the 117-109 score was “a bit too much.”

“He ran from me and they gave it to him,” said a dejected Dirrell after the second loss of his career.

Edwin Rodriguez, Worcester, MA., 27-1, 18 KOs. 176, stopped Craig Baker, Baytown, TX., 16-1, 12 KOs, 175.6, in the third round of a scheduled ten. Both light heavyweights came to the ring in Red Sox baseball jerseys. Baker, an interesting character for sure, wore a Larry Bird shirt to the Friday weigh-in. It featured Bird’s upside down image and read “Flip The Bird” across the front. In boxing they say you kill the body so the head will follow but Rodriguez took a different approach, targeting Baker upstairs early in an attempt to open up those exposed flanks for Rodriguez’s trademark body punches. In the second round, Baker was starting to feel them as Rodriguez whipped him with long right hands downstairs. Baker stayed pesky on the inside but “La Bomba” was walking through his best punches to land his own. After five consecutive right hands from Rodriguez to the head of Baker, the referee jumped in at 2:22 of the third and called a halt, a surprise only to Baker, who was not punching back.

Baker got into boxing to lose weight. After losing more than 100 pounds in 16 professional wins, he finally lost a fight. “I was pacing myself,” said the winner. “When the referee stopped it, Baker wasn’t throwing back. He took my body punches well but they slowed him down. They did what I wanted them to do. It was like chopping down a tree. The accumulation was too much for him.”

Danny O’Connor, Framingham, MA., 26-2, 10 KOs, 147.4, beat up Chris “Gumby” Gilbert, Windsor, VT., 13-2, 10 KOs, 146, registering a fifth round TKO to win the New England welterweight championship close to home. Bull versus matador. Brute versus brains. This is how O’Connor was able to handle the tank-like Gilbert. In the first round, Gilbert charged hard and was merely outboxed. In the second, O’Connor gored the bull with brutal left hands to the gut and Gilbert went down twice in obvious pain. By the fourth, O’Connor was in complete control of the fight and he hit the defenseless Gilbert at will up and down. In the fifth, Gilbert fell again from body punches and the referee put a stop to Gilbert’s agony at 1:04.

“Gilbert was tough as nails. I didn’t believe his level of skill was at my level. I could’ve fought down to his level but I stayed skillful. I stayed true to me,” said O’Connor of the victory.

Undercard Results:

Featherweight Jonathon Guzman, 19-0, 19 KOs, Boca Chica, Dominica Republic, 124.6, stopped Christian Esquivel, 27-7, 20 KOs, Mexico, 123.2, in the corner after five rounds. The undefeated Guzman keeps his knockout streak intact in the last bout of the day.

Heavyweight Danny “Smooth” Kelly, 8-1-1, 7 KOs, Washington DC, 239.8, obliterated Curtis Lee Tate, 7-6, 6 KOs, Memphis, TN., 229.4, with three thudding knockdowns in the first round. The slaughter was wisely waved off by the assigned referee at 1:05.

Middleweight Gary “Spike” O’Sullivan, 21-1, 14 KOs, Cork, Ireland, 159.6, brutalized MelvinBetancourt, 29-2, 23 KOs, Dominic Republic, 159.6, for a scary second round knockout. Sporting a traditional green Irish kilt and bright yellow boxing shoes, O’Sullivan walked his man down and hammered him with lefts and rights before a sweet right hook put Betancourt flat on his back for the count. The pillow-fisted Betancourt had never fought outside of the Dominican Republic and it showed. Time of the KO was 2:46. Said the victorious O’Sullivan afterwards, “Anyone I hit is going to sleep. I want Gennady Golovkin. I’ll knock him out.”

Middleweight Immanuwel Aleem, 13-0, 9 KOs, East Meadow, NY., 159.2, knocked out DavidToribio, 21-15, 14 KOs, Dominican Republic, 159.6, at just 0:39 of the first round. A wicked left to the body sent Toribio down in a corner and a follow up right hand to the head as he fell was just the icing on the cake. Toribio was counted out with a grimaced look on his face.

Light heavyweight prospect Edwin Espinal, 6-0, 4 KOs. Providence, RI., 171, defeated Alvaro Enriquez, 5-14-2, Mexico City, Mexico, 170.4, by unanimous decision to stay undefeated. Bouncing on his toes and attacking behind a high guard, Espinal battered his Mexican opponent around the ring like a rag-doll in the first round before reducing his output in the second to choose his shots more carefully. The boom was nearly lowered in the fourth and final round when Espinal scored a hurtful knockdown from a hard right hand to the chops but Enriquez hung in there like a Mexican fighter. Scores: 40-35 from all three judges.

Super featherweight Ryan “Polish Prince” Kielczewski, 23-1, 7 KOs, Quincy, MA., 127.6 scored a first round knockout of Anthony Napunyi, 11-12, 6 KOs, Nairobi, Kenya, 125.4, to get back in the win column after his first professional loss last month to Danny Aquino in Connecticut on ESPN Friday Night Fights. Kielczewski’s opponent made the ever menacing throat-slash sign at the weigh-in face off but Kielczewski made him pay for that nonsense with a vicious body attack that sent him down and out at 2:54.

Junior lightweight Logan McGuinness, 23-0-1, 10 KOs, Ontario, Canada, 136.8 decisioned Gerardo Cuevas, 17-14, 15 KOs, Mexico City, Mexico, 142, over six rounds. Cuevas brought a soft abdomen to the ring against McGuiness but that didn’t stop him from dropping the Canadian with a soft left jab in the first round. McGuiness responded well by attacking the body of Cuevas who stayed feisty with his jab and busy fists. McGuiness pounded the jelly bellied Cuevas in the third and “Pipino Junior” looked a little gassed in the corner after the assault. The pace slowed considerably in the second half of the bout for both. Scores: 57-56 on all three cards.

Bantamweight Gary “Another” Russell, 2-0, 2 KOs, Washington, DC, 117.2, stopped Brandon Garvin, 0-2, 118.6, Philadelphia, PA in one round. Cornered by current WBC featherweight champion Gary Russell Jr., this Russell made short work of his opponent, dropping him with a right hook along the ropes during an exchange that left Garvin in no condition to continue. The referee appropriately stopped the fight at 1:03 of the first. This was opening bout of the show and the first bell sounded at 1:38 PM.

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Jeffrey Freeman

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

Published

14 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

3 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

4 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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