June Is Month of Triumph, Travails For Irish Fighters

Published

10 years ago

June 23, 2015

My last name has been a cause of some confusion to those boxing buffs inclined to jump to convenient conclusions. More than a few times, I have been asked, “So what are you? Mexican or Puerto Rican?” To which I reply, “I’m actually Spanish-English-French-Irish-Swedish.” That answer always leaves the questioner looking just a bit perplexed. But maybe it shouldn’t; it would seem that there aren’t that many blue-eyed, fair-complexioned Mexicans and Puerto Ricans for whom I might be mistaken.

The Irish-Swedish part owes to my paternal grandmother, and in a nod to her I chose Patrick as my confirmation name in seventh grade, as it is a popular choice by parents of male children in both those countries. My late father is of primarily Latin descent (Mom was of French-English lineage), but, interestingly, Dad (whose given name also is Bernard) was nicknamed Jack during his boxing days, because, during his very fine amateur career, someone thought his crouching style, and penchant for leaping left hooks, was somewhat reminiscent of Jack Dempsey. With just six pro bouts, which resulted in a nondescript 4-1-1 record (with one KO victory), no one should ever have confused my father, a welterweight, with the “Manassas Mauler,” but I did find it fascinating that the surname Dempsey is of Irish origin, and an anglicized form of O’Diomasigh.

As TSS readers know, I periodically do look-back pieces that tie in with the anniversaries of notable fights involving notable fighters. As June draws near its end, I found it curious that the sixth month of the calendar year is so heavily dotted with such fights involving Irish or Irish-American boxers. On June 11, 1982, Larry Holmes defended his WBC heavyweight championship with a 13th-round stoppage of Gerry Cooney in the sweltering outdoor ring at Las Vegas’ Caesars Palace; 23 years later, on that same date, a lumbering Irishman named Kevin McBride ended the career of an out-of-shape, disinterested Mike Tyson, who quit on his stool after six rounds in Washington, D.C.

On June 18, 1941, Joe Louis, making his 18th defense of the heavyweight championship, might have caught a break when the much lighter Billy Conn, ahead on two of the three official scorecards and even on the other, decided to go for the knockout in the 13th round at the Polo Grounds in New York City. Conn’s boldness backfired when he was starched at the 2:58 mark of that round. Asked why he hadn’t tried to continue outboxing the dangerous Louis, Conn, who had relinquished his light heavyweight title to challenge the “Brown Bomber,” famously replied, “What’s the use of being Irish if you can’t be stupid?”

Conn, who was taken out in eight rounds in his rematch with Louis in 1946, also posed this question to the longest-reigning heavyweight champ after their celebrated first match. “Why couldn’t you let me hold the title for a year or so?” Conn asked.

“You had the title for 12 rounds and you couldn’t hold onto it,” the great Louis replied.

Another date to remember is June 23, 1969, when “Irish” Jerry Quarry slugged it out with Joe Frazier in Madison Square Garden, for Smokin’ Joe’s New York State Athletic Association “world” heavyweight title, which was also recognized by Pennsylvania, Maine, Illinois, Texas and Massachusetts. The courageous but cut-prone Quarry gave as good as he got for a while, but in a humdinger of a scrap that was named Fight of the Year by The Ring magazine, Quarry, bleeding badly over his right eye, was not allowed to come out for the eighth round by referee Arthur Mercante.

It has been said that Quarry was a philosophical disciple of the unfortunate Conn in that he attempted to outbox Muhammad Ali (who defeated him twice) and overpower Frazier (against whom he also was 0-2), but that is a misrepresentation. Quarry went right at both of those all-time greats, but came up short. It should be noted, however, that Quarry likely have been at least an alphabet champion in a later era, and that he was more than capable enough to handily outpoint feared contender Ron Lyle and blow out the power-punching Earnie Shavers in one round.

In the forewords to “Hard Times: The Triumph and Tragedy of `Irish’ Jerry Quarry,” co-authored by Steve Springer and Blake Chavez, another elite heavyweight from that period, George Foreman, says that “Jerry Quarry was the best heavyweight fighter never to have won a championship belt. When I became heavyweight champion of the world, I dodged him purposely … He fought toe to toe with heavyweight champion Joe Frazier, twice. He fought heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali twice. He outboxed two-time heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson. He outpunched Earnie Shavers. He destroyed Mac Foster and schooled Ron Lyle.”

As June melts into July, it should be noted that the upcoming month is largely reserved for some of the high points of the legendary heavyweight champion with that Irish surname. On June 2, 1921, Jack Dempsey knocked out Georges Carpentier in Jersey City, N.J., to retain his title in the first round of what was then the first million-dollar gate; on July 4, 1919, Dempsey flattened Jess Willard, also in four rounds, in Toledo, Ohio, to win the championship; on July 4, 1923, he outpointed Tommy Gibbons over 15 rounds in Shelby, Montana; on July 21, 1927, he starched Jack Sharkey in seven rounds in New York City, and on July 27, 1918, he needed only 23 seconds of the first round to blow away Fred Fulton in Harrison, N.J.

Not ceding the entirety of July to the incomparable Dempsey, one of my favorite fighters, “Irish” Micky Ward, took a 10-round decision over Emanuel Augustus on July 13, 2001, in Hampton Beach, N.H., which was so action-packed it was named Fight of the Year by The Ring.

What do all these fights, and fighters, have in common? It got me to thinking. There are certain generic groupings that instantly call to mind certain characteristics. Philadelphia fighters are said to come out of their mothers’ wombs firing that city’s signature punch, the left hook; Mexican fighters are acknowledged as being tougher than a 50-cent steak, and resistant to ever taking a backward step. If those generalizations are at least somewhat accurate, shouldn’t Irish fighters also have their own category? And what would be the most common trait, the thread that ties them together?

I asked Gerry Cooney, who, like Quarry, might have been a world champion, and a good one, if he had come along at a different time, if there are certain traits, in and out of the ring, that are common to fighters who are Irish to any appreciable degree.

“All fighters, whatever their background, fight their hearts out,” “Gentleman Gerry” responded. “I always fought my heart out. I fought to win. Jerry Quarry was the same way. But, really, all fighters are that way.

“But, sure, I’m proud to be an Irish-American. The Irish take pride in being tough guys.”

That toughness likely is an inherited quality. Remember, the Irish who came to America sought to escape economic hardship in their homeland (the Irish potato famine and a resistance, in some cases, to real or imagined British authority). Those who arrived on these shores often were relegated to manual labor and continued second-class citizenship, as was the case with other ethnicities arriving on these shores. And if boxing is proof of anything, it is that hard times make for hard men. Remember the Ron Howard-directed 1992 movie about Irish immigrants in the late 19th century, “Far and Away”? Tom Cruise played the role of Joseph Donnelly, a poor lad from the old country who earned his respect and a decent wage in a strange new land as a bare-knuckle fighter in bouts staged in waterfront saloons.

Donnelly is a fictionalized version of such very real Irish fighters as John L. Sullivan, Jim Corbett, Dempsey, Gene Tunney, James J. Braddock, Conn, Mickey Walker and Tommy Loughran, whose ideological successors were Quarry, Cooney, Barry McGuigan, Ward, Wayne McCullough, John Duddy and Andy Lee.

The Irish have had more than their fair share of successes inside the ropes, to be sure, but their golden linings frequently have been obscured by dark clouds; even Dempsey had his Long Count, Conn his failed bid to put away Louis, Quarry his of-fer against Ali and Frazier, Cooney his courageous but doomed challenge of Holmes. Ward’s fights were pure entertainment, but he lost two of three in his epic trilogy with Arturo Gatti and never quite attained elite status. One of the more poignant stories I ever reported was that of Seamus McDonagh, the Pierce Brosnan lookalike who was stopped in four rounds by a pre-championship Evander Holyfield, lost himself in the bottle and gravitated westward, where he operated a shoeshine stand in San Francisco, showing patrons a wallet-sized photo of himself in action against Holyfield to anyone who expressed even a mild interest in boxing.

Then again, perhaps my interest in Irish boxers owes in part to the fact I am a writer, and the Irish are a people who, if anything, are better known for their mastery of the written word than their determination with padded gloves on their fists. Among the celebrated men of letters to have come from the Emerald Isle are James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Swift, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett and William Butler Yeats.

It is my Irish-Swedish grandmother, who died when I was in grade school, who encouraged me as much as anyone to read the classics and to write about anything and everything that drew my attention. Perhaps she intrinsically understood that one of my favorite things was to watch the “Friday Night Fights” with her son, the ex-fighter, and from that bonding experience a career in boxing journalism might someday evolve for Bernard the younger. Then again, probably not.

We are all the products of multiple influences, of genetic splicing, of curiosities cast as a wide net and eventually narrowed to one or two specialized interests. When I look at my red-haired grandchildren (well, two of them, anyway), I see that part of myself that was passed on by my Grandma Lala and somewhere along the way brushed up against fighters like Jerry Quarry and Micky Ward.

In Quarry biography, there is a reference to his last fight of any real significance, in which the used-up and cut-up former contender is stopped in four rounds by Ken Norton. As a despondent Quarry laid on a table in his dressing room, Bill Slayton, Norton’s trainer, came by to extend his well wishes.

“The doctors had him on the table because he was all busted up,” Slayton is quoted as saying. Jerry asked him, “Did I disgrace myself?” To which Slaton replied, “You fought like an Irishman.”

Then, as now, that should be taken as a compliment.

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 326: Top Rank and San Diego Smoke

Published

3 hours ago

May 9, 2025

David A. Avila

Avila Perspective, Chap. 326: Top Rank and San Diego Smoke

Years ago, I worked at a newsstand in the Beverly Hills area. It was a 24-hour a day version and the people that dropped by were very colorful and unique.

One elderly woman Eva, who bordered on homeless but pridefully wore lipstick, would stop by the newsstand weekly to purchase a pack of menthol cigarettes. On one occasion, she asked if I had ever been to San Diego?

I answered “yes, many times.”

She countered “you need to watch out for San Diego Smoke.”

This Saturday, Top Rank brings its brand of prizefighting to San Diego or what could be called San Diego Smoke. Leading the fight card is Mexico’s Emanuel Navarrete (39-2-1, 32 KOs) defending the WBO super feather title against undefeated Filipino Charly Suarez (18-0, 10 KOs) at Pechanga Arena. ESPN will televise.

This is Navarrete’s fourth defense of the super feather title.

The last time Navarrete stepped in the boxing ring he needed six rounds to dismantle the very capable Oscar Valdez in their rematch. One thing about Mexico City’s Navarrete is he always brings “the smoke.”

Also, on the same card is Fontana, California’s Raymond Muratalla (22-0, 17 KOs) vying for the interim IBF lightweight title against Russia’s Zaur Abdullaev (20-1, 12 KOs) on the co-main event.

Abdullaev has only fought once before in the USA and was handily defeated by Devin Haney back in 2019. But that was six years ago and since then he has knocked off various contenders.

Muratalla is a slick fighting lightweight who trains at the Robert Garcia Boxing Academy now in Moreno Valley, Calif. It’s a virtual boot camp with many of the top fighters on the West Coast available to spar on a daily basis. If you need someone bigger or smaller, stronger or faster someone can match those needs.

When you have that kind of preparation available, it’s tough to beat. Still, you have to fight the fight. You never know what can happen inside the prize ring.

Another fighter to watch is Perla Bazaldua, 19, a young and very talented female fighter out of the Los Angeles area. She is trained by Manny Robles who is building a small army of top female fighters.

Bazaldua (1-0, 1 KO) meets Mona Ward (0-1) in a super flyweight match on the preliminary portion of the Top Rank card. Top Rank does not sign many female fighters so you know that they believe in her talent.

Others on the Top Rank card in San Diego include Giovani Santillan, Andres Cortes, Albert Gonzalez, Sebastian Gonzalez and others.

They all will bring a lot of smoke to San Diego.

Probox TV

A strong card led by Erickson “The Hammer” Lubin (26-2, 18 KOs) facing Ardreal Holmes Jr. (17-0, 6 KOs) in a super welterweight clash between southpaws takes place on Saturday at Silver Spurs Arena in Kissimmee, Florida. PROBOX TV will stream the fight card.

Ardreal has rocketed up the standings and now faces veteran Lubin whose only losses came against world titlists Sebastian Fundora and Jermell Charlo. It’s a great match to decide who deserves a world title fight next.

Another juicy match pits Argentina’s Nazarena Romero (14-0-2) against Mexico’s Mayelli Flores (12-1-1) in a female super bantamweight contest.

Nottingham, England

Anthony Cacace (23-1, 8 KOs) defends the IBO super featherweight title against Leigh Wood (28-3, 17 KOs) in Wood’s hometown on Saturday at Nottingham Arena in Nottingham, England. DAZN will stream the Queensberry Promotions card.

Ireland’s Cacace seems to have the odds against him. But he is no stranger to dancing in the enemy’s lair or on foreign territory. He formerly defeated Josh Warrington in London and Joe Cordina in Riyadh in IBO title defenses.

Lampley at Wild Card

Boxing telecaster Jim Lampley will be signing his new book It Happened! at the Wild Card Boxing gym in Hollywood, Calif. on Saturday, May 10, beginning at 2 p.m. Lampley has been a large part of many of the greatest boxing events in the past 40 years. He and Freddie Roach will be at the signing.

Fights to Watch (All times Pacific Time)

Sat. DAZN 11 a.m. Anthony Cacace (23-1) vs Leigh Wood (28-3).

Sat. PROBOX.tv 3 p.m. Erickson Lubin (26-2) vs Ardreal Holmes Jr. (17-0).

Sat. ESPN 7 p.m. Emanuel Navarrete (39-2-1) vs Charly Suarez (18-0); Raymond Muratalla (22-0) vs Zaur Abdullaev (20-1).

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

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“Breadman” Edwards: An Unlikely Boxing Coach with a Panoramic View of the Sport

Published

23 hours ago

May 8, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Stephen-Breadman-Edwards-An-Unlikely-Boxing-Coach-with-a-Panoramic-View-of-the-Sport

Stephen “Breadman” Edwards’ first fighter won a world title. That may be some sort of record.

It’s true. Edwards had never trained a fighter, amateur or pro, before taking on professional novice Julian “J Rock” Williams. On May 11, 2019, Williams wrested the IBF 154-pound world title from Jarrett Hurd. The bout, a lusty skirmish, was in Fairfax, Virginia, near Hurd’s hometown in Maryland, and the previously undefeated Hurd had the crowd in his corner.

In boxing, Stephen Edwards wears two hats. He has a growing reputation as a boxing coach, a hat he will wear on Saturday, May 31, at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas when the two fighters that he currently trains, super middleweight Caleb Plant and middleweight Kyrone Davis, display their wares on a show that will air on Amazon Prime Video. Plant, who needs no introduction, figures to have little trouble with his foe in a match conceived as an appetizer to a showdown with Jermall Charlo. Davis, coming off his career-best win, an upset of previously undefeated Elijah Garcia, is in tough against fast-rising Cuban prospect Yoenli Hernandez, a former world amateur champion.

Edwards’ other hat is that of a journalist. His byline appears at “Boxing Scene” in a column where he answers questions from readers.

It’s an eclectic bag of questions that Breadman addresses, ranging from his thoughts on an upcoming fight to his thoughts on one of the legendary prizefighters of olden days. Boxing fans, more so than fans of any other sport, enjoy hashing over fantasy fights between great fighters of different eras. Breadman is very good at this, which isn’t to suggest that his opinions are gospel, merely that he always has something provocative to add to the discourse. Like all good historians, he recognizes that the best history is revisionist history.

“Fighters are constantly mislabled,” he says. “Everyone talks about Joe Louis’s right hand. But if you study him you see that his left hook is every bit as good as his right hand and it’s more sneaky in terms of shock value when it lands.”

Stephen “Breadman” Edwards was born and raised in Philadelphia. His father died when he was three. His maternal grandfather, a Korean War veteran, filled the void. The man was a big boxing fan and the two would watch the fights together on the family television.

Edwards’ nickname dates to his early teen years when he was one of the best basketball players in his neighborhood. The derivation is the 1975 movie “Cornbread, Earl and Me,” starring Laurence Fishburne in his big screen debut. Future NBA All-Star Jamaal Wilkes, fresh out of UCLA, plays Cornbread, a standout high school basketball player who is mistakenly murdered by the police.

Coming out of high school, Breadman had to choose between an academic scholarship at Temple or an athletic scholarship at nearby Lincoln University. He chose the former, intending to major in criminal justice, but didn’t stay in college long. What followed were a succession of jobs including a stint as a city bus driver. To stay fit, he took to working out at the James Shuler Memorial Gym where he sparred with some of the regulars, but he never boxed competitively.

Over the years, Philadelphia has harbored some great boxing coaches. Among those of recent vintage, the names George Benton, Bouie Fisher, Nazeem Richardson, and Bozy Ennis come quickly to mind. Breadman names Richardson and West Coast trainer Virgil Hunter as the men that have influenced him the most.

We are all a product of our times, so it’s no surprise that the best decade of boxing, in Breadman’s estimation, was the 1980s. This was the era of the “Four Kings” with Sugar Ray Leonard arguably standing tallest.

Breadman was a big fan of Leonard and of Leonard’s three-time rival Roberto Duran. “I once purchased a DVD that had all of Roberto Duran’s title defenses on it,” says Edwards. “This was a back before the days of YouTube.”

But Edwards’ interest in the sport goes back much deeper than the 1980s. He recently weighed in on the “Pittsburgh Windmill” Harry Greb whose legend has grown in recent years to the point that some have come to place him above Sugar Ray Robinson on the list of the greatest of all time.

“Greb was a great fighter with a terrific resume, of that there is no doubt,” says Breadman, “but there is no video of him and no one alive ever saw him fight, so where does this train of thought come from?”

Edwards notes that in Harry Greb’s heyday, he wasn’t talked about in the papers as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the sport. The boxing writers were partial to Benny Leonard who drew comparisons to the venerated Joe Gans.

Among active fighters, Breadman reserves his highest praise for Terence Crawford. “Body punching is a lost art,” he once wrote. “[Crawford] is a great body puncher who starts his knockouts with body punches, but those punches are so subtle they are not fully appreciated.”

If the opening line holds up, Crawford will enter the ring as the underdog when he opposes Canelo Alvarez in September. Crawford, who will enter the ring a few weeks shy of his 38^th birthday, is actually the older fighter, older than Canelo by almost three full years (it doesn’t seem that way since the Mexican redhead has been in the public eye so much longer), and will theoretically be rusty as 13 months will have elapsed since his most recent fight.

Breadman discounts those variables. “Terence is older,” he says, “but has less wear and tear and never looks rusty after a long layoff.” That Crawford will win he has no doubt, an opinion he tweaked after Canelo’s performance against William Scull: “Canelo’s legs are not the same. Bud may even stop him now.”

Edwards has been with Caleb Plant for Plant’s last three fights. Their first collaboration produced a Knockout of the Year candidate. With one ferocious left hook, Plant sent Anthony Dirrell to dreamland. What followed were a 12-round setback to David Benavidez and a ninth-round stoppage of Trevor McCumby.

Breadman keeps a hectic schedule. From Monday through Friday, he’s at the DLX Gym in Las Vegas coaching Caleb Plant and Kyrone Davis. On weekends, he’s back in Philadelphia, checking in on his investment properties and, of greater importance, watching his kids play sports. His 14-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son are standout all-around athletes.

On those long flights, he has plenty of time to turn on his laptop and stream old fights or perhaps work on his next article. That’s assuming he can stay awake.

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Arne’s Almanac: The Good, the Bad, and the (Mostly) Ugly; a Weekend Boxing Recap and More

Published

3 days ago

May 6, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Arne's-Almanac-The-Good-the-Bad-and-the-(mostly)-Ugly-A-Weeend-Boxing-Recap-and-More

Arne’s Almanac: The Good, the Bad, and the (Mostly) Ugly; a Weekend Boxing Recap and More

It’s old news now, but on back-to-back nights on the first weekend of May, there were three fights that finished in the top six snoozefests ever as measured by punch activity. That’s according to CompuBox which has been around for 40 years.

In Times Square, the boxing match between Devin Haney and Jose Carlos Ramirez had the fifth-fewest number of punches thrown, but the main event, Ryan Garcia vs. Rolly Romero, was even more of a snoozefest, landing in third place on this ignoble list.

Those standings would be revised the next night – knocked down a peg when Canelo Alvarez and William Scull combined to throw a historically low 445 punches in their match in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 152 by the victorious Canelo who at least pressed the action, unlike Scull (pictured) whose effort reminded this reporter of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” – no, not the movie starring Paul Newman, just the title.

CompuBox numbers, it says here, are best understood as approximations, but no amount of rejiggering can alter the fact that these three fights were stinkers. Making matters worse, these were pay-per-views. If one had bundled the two events, rather than buying each separately, one would have been out $90 bucks.

****

Thankfully, the Sunday card on ESPN from Las Vegas was redemptive. It was just what the sport needed at this moment – entertaining fights to expunge some of the bad odor. In the main go, Naoya Inoue showed why he trails only Shohei Ohtani as the most revered athlete in Japan.

Throughout history, the baby-faced assassin has been a boxing promoter’s dream. It’s no coincidence that down through the ages the most common nickname for a fighter – and by an overwhelming margin — is “Kid.”

And that partly explains Naoya Inoue’s charisma. The guy is 32 years old, but here in America he could pass for 17.

Joey Archer

Joey Archer, who passed away last week at age 87 in Rensselaer, New York, was one of the last links to an era of boxing identified with the nationally televised Friday Night Fights at Madison Square Garden.

Joey Archer

Archer made his debut as an MSG headliner on Feb. 4, 1961, and had 12 more fights at the iconic mid-Manhattan sock palace over the next six years. The final two were world title fights with defending middleweight champion Emile Griffith.

Archer etched his name in the history books in November of 1965 in Pittsburgh where he won a comfortable 10-round decision over Sugar Ray Robinson, sending the greatest fighter of all time into retirement. (At age 45, Robinson was then far past his peak.)

Born and raised in the Bronx, Joey Archer was a cutie; a clever counter-puncher recognized for his defense and ultimately for his granite chin. His style was embedded in his DNA and reinforced by his mentors.

Early in his career, Archer was domiciled in Houston where he was handled by veteran trainer Bill Gore who was then working with world lightweight champion Joe Brown. Gore would ride into the Hall of Fame on the coattails of his most famous fighter, “Will-o’-the Wisp” Willie Pep. If Joey Archer had any thoughts of becoming a banger, Bill Gore would have disabused him of that notion.

In all honesty, Archer’s style would have been box office poison if he had been black. It helped immensely that he was a native New Yorker of Irish stock, albeit the Irish angle didn’t have as much pull as it had several decades earlier. But that observation may not be fair to Archer who was bypassed twice for world title fights after upsetting Hurricane Carter and Dick Tiger.

When he finally caught up with Emile Griffith, the former hat maker wasn’t quite the fighter he had been a few years earlier but Griffith, a two-time Fighter of the Year by The Ring magazine and the BWAA and a future first ballot Hall of Famer, was still a hard nut to crack.

Archer went 30 rounds with Griffith, losing two relatively tight decisions and then, although not quite 30 years old, called it quits. He finished 45-4 with 8 KOs and was reportedly never knocked down, yet alone stopped, while answering the bell for 365 rounds. In retirement, he ran two popular taverns with his older brother Jimmy Archer, a former boxer who was Joey’s trainer and manager late in Joey’s career.

May he rest in peace.

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