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THE HAUSER CHRONICLES: Ronda Rousey

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Ronda Rousey has been in the news a lot lately. The 28-year-old UFC women’s 135-pound champion and consensus choice as best female MMA combatant in the world is scheduled to defend her title against Bethe Correia on August 1. She has been featured in myriad publications ranging from Time Magazine and The New Yorker to Maxim, ESPN: The Magazine, and the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Her autobiography – My Fight, Your Fight – was published recently by Regan Arts. Movie-goers have seen her on-screen in Entourage and The Expendables 3.

Most recently, Rousey was chosen over Floyd Mayweather as “Best Fighter” at the 2015 ESPY Awards, after which she stuck it to Mayweather with the declaration, “I wonder how Floyd feels being beat by a woman for once.”

Rousey stands at the complicated intersection of sex and violence. First and foremost, she’s a fighter with a fighter’s instincts and a fighter’s mentality. She won gold medals in judo at the 2004 and 2006 Junior World Championships and  the 2004 and 2005 Pan Am Games before capturing a silver medal at the 2007 World Championships. She was a 2004 Olympian and earned a bronze medal in judo at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, becoming the first American woman ever to win an Olympic medal in her sport.

Rousey is now the face of women’s MMA. It’s a pretty face, with long dirty-blonde hair that extends below her shoulder blades. She looks at times like a model rather than a fighter. The camera is her friend. She’s photogenic and telegenic. She has charisma.

She’s also smart, verbal, cocky, and energetic with an instinct for finding the spotlight and knowing what to do when it’s shining on her.

She’s never boring.

On the surface, Rousey has an upbeat personality. But there seems to be a fair amount of anger bubbling not far beneath the surface.

“I’m complicated,” Ronda says. “Too complicated to be understood.”

Rousey’s mother was the first American woman to win a World Judo Championship; a feat she accomplished in 1984 at age 26. She now has a PhD in educational psychology.

Ronda was born in 1987. “I come from a family of very empowered women,” she notes.

She also comes from a dysfunctional family that makes the average dysfunctional family look functional. Her father committed suicide in 1995 after suffering complications relating to Bernard-Soulier syndrome (a bleeding disorder). Ronda suffered from a speech impediment as a child and was unable to speak in full sentences until age six. She had a tortured adolescence,  highlighted by a love-hate relationship with her mother, who believed in tough love, with emphasis on the tough.

“I was very shy,” Rousey recounts. “I wore baggy clothes all the time. I had a lot of evolving to do.”

Meanwhile, judo was “the family business.” Ronda began learning the craft at age eleven and was obsessed with it as she grew older. She also became bulimic in her constant struggle to make weight. She was determined to pay any price necessary to succeed.

“I was raised with the mentality that, if you’re going to do anything, you’re going to do it to be the best at it,” Rousey told writer Tom Gerbasi. “The self-confidence that people see in me now has developed over time. It came mostly from doing well in sports. I felt that, if I was amazing in something, I’m actually a cool person and I should think more of myself. It’s something about medals, having a tangible thing to hold in your hand. It’s like, ‘Oh, look; I’m awesome.’”

After the 2008 Olympics, Rousey spent a year abusing her body in a different way. In My Fight, Your Fight, she acknowledges, “I had my Olympic medal. And I quickly realized how little happiness it brought me. I had endured so much to get to the Olympics. All along the way, I told myself that the result would be amazing; that it would be all worthwhile. But the truth was, it hadn’t been worth it. I got back from Beijing with a bronze medal and no home, no job, no prospects. I finally found a bartending job. I camped out in the car for a couple of nights before I got paid. I deposited my money in the bank and set out on my mission to find a non-automotive home. My first apartment was a twelve-by-twelve-foot first-floor studio. The only sink was in the bathroom and it constantly fell out of the wall. On more than one occasion, sewage would come up out of the toilet, and I’d come home from work to an apartment filled with s–t.”

“Building up my body and chasing the Olympic dream had made me unhappy,” Rousey continues. “I wanted to have a normal life. I wanted to have a dog and an apartment and to party. From the end of 2008 well into 2009, my plan involved drinking heavily, not working out, and cramming everything I thought I had missed into as short a time as possible. I started my morning with a smoke on the way to work. When I got to Gladstones [the bar where she worked], I would go behind the bar and mix dark and light ingredients that tasted like delicious iced mocha with vodka in it. I would sit and drink that all morning. On Sundays, these two hip-hop producer dudes would order surf-and-turf and Cadillac margaritas. They tipped me thirty dollars in cash and enough marijuana to get me high for several days. During the week, one of the regular bar patrons sold Vicodin to servers and would slip me one or two for passing the cash and pills between him and the waitstaff without our boss knowing. I spent that whole year lost.”

Then Rousey found salvation in mixed martial arts. She returned to the gym, resumed training, and had three amateur fights, winning them all via armbar submission in a total of 104 seconds. More on Rousey’s armbar later. That was followed by four professional bouts (two with KOTC and two with Strikeforce) that lasted a total of 138 seconds. At the same time, to make ends meet, she was working as a veterinarian’s assistant at an animal clinic, on the graveyard shift at 24-Hour Fitness, and as a judo instructor.

On August 18, 2012, Rousey ran her MMA record to 6-and-0 with a 54-second demolition of Sarah Kaufman. Three months later, UFC president Dana White (who’d stated publicly that UFC would never promote women’s competition) announced that the organization had signed Ronda as its first woman fighter. UFC then created its first weight class for women – 135 pounds – for Rousey.

She might not have “saved” UFC. But she was certainly a key component in reversing what appeared to be stagnation if not a downward trend in the organization’s popularity. That was evident at a press conference I attended at the Beacon Theatre in New York two years ago.

The press conference was part of a national tour designed to promote a series of UFC pay-per-view events. Jon Jones, Georges St-Pierre, Cain Velasquez, Alexander Gustafsson, Johny Hendricks, and Junior dos Santos were in attendance. But the spotlight shone brightest on Rousey, who was readying for her second fight under the UFC banner: a rematch of an earlier conquest of Miesha Tate.

The fighters were seated onstage at the Beacon Theatre. Dana White made a brief opening statement. Then fans (the event was open to the public) were invited to ask questions from the audience.

Rousey was wearing a short fitted red skirt, five-inch heels, and a black top that was notable for its decolletage.

“Your fight is stealing all the heat, all the headlines,” she was asked. “Is this a conscious effort on your part? Are you trying to outshine the guys?”

“It’s not like I’m purposely plotting all this out,” Ronda answered. “But if the opportunity is there, I’m going to play it up. The girls have to fight for attention. I can’t say it’s a bad thing that all everyone is talking about is the chicks.”

Asked if she hated Tate, Rousey replied, “I don’t use the term ‘hate.’ But I’ve learned more about her personality and I haven’t seen anything I like. I would compare being around her to chewing tin foil.”

When the Q&A ended, the combatants moved to the front of the stage to sign autographs. Eighty percent of the fans lined up for Ronda. The six men and Tate split the other twenty percent.

Rousey has good people skills. When dealing with the public, she’s affable and patient in answering questions and signing autographs. She has a ready smile that seems sincere.

But don’t push the wrong button.

Several months earlier, in an interview with Jim Rome on ESPN, Rousey had discussed the pros and cons of having sex before a fight.

“For girls, it raises your testosterone,” Ronda had said. “So I try to have as much sex as possible before I fight. Not like with everybody. I don’t put out a Craigslist ad. But if I’ve got a steady, I’m going to be like, ‘Yo! Fight time is coming up.’”

Now, as Rousey signed autographs, one of the fans in line shouted out, “Ronda; how many times do you have sex before a fight?”

“Get the f–k out,” Rousey responded.

“I’m just asking,” the fan pressed.

“I don’t give a f–k. If your mother was standing behind you and heard you ask that question, what would she say? I’m serious. Get the f–k out.”

At Rousey’s direction, the fan was escorted by security from the theatre.

I stood on the stage beside Rousey and talked with her for over an hour as she signed autographs.

Ronda is a writers’ fighter. She says what she thinks and is a veritable sound-bite machine.

Some of our conversation revolved around the changes that her new-found fame had brought to her life.

“Training is still my number-one priority,” Rousey said. “The difference now is that I used to have time between fights to chill out. Now there’s no break in the media attention. That’s just the way it is. Fortunately, I have a great team that helps me coordinate everything. It’s a trade-off, really. Instead of working odd hours at different jobs and fitting it around my training schedule, I have more media obligations. What’s happening now is better and more profitable.”

In the hour that followed, Ronda discoursed on a wide range of subjects.

*    “Women’s eating disorders are a cause for me. The presentation of what a woman’s body should look like is all wrong. I’m in a weight-division sport, so watching my weight is part of my life. But when it come to things like women’s models, we’re presented with a false and even unhealthy ideal.”

*    “I had a lot of hope with Obama. In some ways, I’ve been disappointed. I was expecting more change than we’ve seen. In politics now, what we’re given is an illusion of choice. But I was able to get my teeth fixed because of Obamacare. And I still like him.”

*    “The world would be better if people said what was on their mind all the time.”

*    “I try to be nice to people when they’re nice to me. But I wasn’t born to smile like an idiot and be polite no matter what. ‘Thou shall be polite’ is not a f—-n’ commandment.”

*    “No one has the right to touch you without your consent.”

*    “They wrestled naked in Greece.”

*    “I didn’t get to where I am by being dumb.”

*    “I’m single right now, so my relationship success rate is zero.”

That latter comment leads to a less than satisfactory facet of Rousey’s life. As catalogued in the pages of My Fight, Your Fight, her love life has been marked by an endless stream of failed relationships with loser guys (who, let’s not forget, she chose as boyfriends).

One of Ronda’s live-in boyfriends was a heroin addict.

“We would break up, but it always felt like the universe kept pulling us back together. The day he stole my car was the low point.”

A more recent boyfriend took nude photos her without her knowledge. Ronda found them on his computer, erased his hard drive, and waited for him to come home, at which point she “slapped him across the face so hard my hand hurt, punched him in the face with a straight right, then a left hook, kneed him in the face, and tossed him aside on the kitchen floor.”

“Time does not always heal all,” Rousey writes. “Sometimes, it just gives you more time to get pissed off.”

“The problem,” her mother told her, “is, you set the bar with your first boyfriend. After Dick, you could bring home a gorilla and we would be like, ‘Hello, sir. So nice to meet you. Can I offer you a banana?’”

Miesha Tate became the first opponent to last past the first round against Rousey when they met in their rematch. Ultimately, she tapped out at 58 seconds of the third stanza. Three more victories followed. Rousey vanquished Sara McMann in 66 seconds. Alexis Davis and Cat Zingano lasted 16 and 14 seconds respectively. Those are staggering numbers.

Rousey’s professional record is now 11-and-0 with ten of her victories coming in the first round and seven in the first minute. She is 5-and-0 in UFC competition. Because she fights under the UFC banner only twice a year, her struggle with bulimia is in the past. “For about four hours a year, I weigh 135 pounds,” she says. “My actual weight is closer to 150.”

Rousey’s success in the octagon is built on rigorous disciplined training.

“No one is easy until after you beat them,” she notes. “Anything can happen. Anybody can push you the distance, and it could be the person you least expect. So I assume that every single person is a danger to me and every single person is trying to beat me and hurt me, and I’m going to be prepared for every single person, no matter who it is. I want training to be the hard part and competing to be the easy part. I’m not going to train less and make competing harder. The knowledge that everything can be taken away at any second is what makes me work so hard. You have to be prepared to win on your worst day.”

Ronda’s good looks are a marketing plus, but they don’t help her once a fight starts. The fights aren’t a fantasy video game or scripted WWE extravaganza. They’re real.

Rousey writes left-handed but fights in an orthodox mode.

“I’m extremely hard to prepare for,” she says, “because I don’t walk out with a set game plan. I always walk out to improvise and be creative, and that’s hard to prepare for as opposed to someone who has a very rigid and predictable style. I see the other girl [in the octagon before the fight starts]. I lock in on her. I always try to make eye contact. Sometimes, she looks away. I want her to look at me. I want her to stare me in the eye. I want her to see that I have no fear. I want her to know that she stands no chance. I want her to be scared. I want her to know that she is going to lose.”

“I’m emotionless when I’m out there,” Rousey continues. “I see all the options and I look to finish. I try to always be the first one to engage. That way, they’re reacting to me more than I’m reacting to them. It’s easier to predict because I know, with every single thing that I do, there’s only so many right ways that they can react to it. I’ve memorized every single reaction that they could possibly have, and I have an answer to every single reaction that they have. So it’s not being able to see several steps ahead. It’s being aware of every single possible scenario and knowing how to deal with every scenario.”

Referring to a 39-second triumph over Julia Budd early in her MMA career, Rousey observed, “It only looks easy because that throw I used, I’ve done that throw probably thirty thousand times in my life. When you actually master something, it becomes easy. But getting to the point where you master it so it’s effortless for you, that’s the hard part.”

And there’s more.

“I dissociate from pain,” Rousey explains, “because I am not the pain that I am feeling. I refuse to allow pain to dictate my decision-making. Pain is just one piece of information that I’m receiving. I can choose to acknowledge that information or I can choose to ignore it.”

Rousey’s fights are not for the squeamish. She has a killer instinct and goes after opponents the way Mike Tyson did when Tyson was in his prime. And she damages opponents.

The Green Bay Packers of the 1960s had their famed end-sweep. Opposing defenses knew it was coming. But it was so well-executed that they couldn’t stop it. The same is true of Rousey’s armbar.

An armbar involves locking an opponent’s arm in, leveraging it, and hyperextending the elbow in a way that causes ligament damage and, if the opponent does not submit, dislocates the elbow.

“When people say that I’m a one trick pony and only have the one armbar,” Rousey told Tom Gerbasi, “they don’t realize that I have so many setups to that armbar that I don’t even know them all. When you’re watching boxing and you see somebody knock someone out with a right hand every time, they’re not like ‘Oh, they’re a one trick pony.’ No. They have a billion different setups for that right hand. Just because it ended with a right hand on the face, it doesn’t mean it’s the same thing every time. So many people are unfamiliar with grappling and they just see the armbar ending and they assume the setup is the same. But if you look back at all those fights, I’ve jumped into that armbar from many different positions. It ends the same way, but the setups are always different.”

“When you do the armbar,” Rousey writes in My Fight, Your Fight, “the aim is to put so much pressure on the person’s arm that you pop the joint out of the socket. You can feel it when it pops. It’s like ripping the leg off a Thanksgiving turkey. You hear it pop-pop-pop, then squish.”

Then, describing her use of an armbar against Miesha Tate, Rousey recounts, “Pulling her arm straight, I arched back until I felt the squish, her ligaments snapping between my legs. She was still trying to escape. I grabbed her hand and pushed it over the side of my hip, forcing her elbow to go more than ninety degrees in the wrong direction. I ripped off muscles from her bone and tendons. With a vice on her injured arm, I sat up to punch her in the face with my other hand. With her elbow fully dislocated, there was nothing holding her in that position anymore except the pain and her fear of me.”

“I try to win every fight in a way that my opponent never wants to see me again,” Ronda says. “After I win, for a little while, everything is right in the world. Winning feels like falling in love, except it’s like falling in love with everybody in the room all at once.”

Without fighting, where would Rousey be?

Meanwhile, whether or not one likes mixed martial arts, it’s clear that Ronda Rousey is happening at the moment. The mainstream media has seized upon her. She has been on the cover of numerous magazines and featured on television offerings as diverse as Conan and HBO’s Real Sports. Type her name into Google, hit “search,” and it brings up 14.5 million results.

Will she become a mainstream superstar? Will what’s happening now stick? Will the wave of publicity she’s currently surfing fade away or will there be bigger waves in the future to surf?

And who can beat her in the octagon? Rousey isn’t like boxer Mia St. John, who was promoted largely on the basis of her looks and could fight a little but was far down on any honest list of fighters ranked on the basis of their ring skills. Rousey is the most dominant woman fighter in the world today.

In the past, Ronda has said, “I think the style of fighter that I would have a problem with would be a very high quality striker with very good footwork and takedown defense.”

She has never been punched clean by a hard striker. How good is her chin? What happens if she gets taken deep into a fight?

The woman who most people in the industry think would be the most competitive opponent for Rousey is Cristiane “Cyborg” Justino, a Brazilian currently living in California, who competes at 145 pounds. Justino was sidelined in 2012 by a one-year suspension after testing positive for the anabolic steroid stanozolol. That fight is ten pounds away and maybe further.

For the moment then, there are two obvious answers to the question, “How do you beat Ronda Rousey?” . . . “You have to get to her before she gets to you,” and “You don’t.”

“When I came into MMA, I wanted to make money,” Rousey says. “But it was more important to me to be the best and most exciting competitor in the world at what I do. Not everybody is going to like me. I live a life of exposure. People are going to see pretty much how I am all the time. I’m not going to be on a first date with everybody all the time. Everything is out there. Whatever people think is what they think. Any mistake I make is going to be scrutinized. That’s why I’m apprehensive about accepting the term ‘role model.’”

It has been a strange journey. More twists and turns lie ahead. Rousey could be a very special vessel. And not just for MMA. MMA might be a platform for more important things. But what?

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 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.”

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History has Shortchanged Freddie Dawson, One of the Best Boxers of his Era

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History has Shortchanged Freddie Dawson, One of the Best Boxers of his Era

This reporter was rummaging around the internet last week when he stumbled on a story in the May 1950 issue of Ebony under the byline of Mike Jacobs. Boxing was then in the doldrums (isn’t it always?) and Jacobs, the most powerful promoter in boxing during the era of Joe Louis, was lassoed by the editors of the magazine to address the question of whether the over-representation of black boxers was killing the sport at the box office.

This hoary allegation had been kicking around even before the heyday of Jack Johnson, bubbling forth whenever an important black-on-black fight played to a sea of empty seats as had happened the previous year when Chicago’s Comiskey Park hosted the world heavyweight title fight between Ezzard Charles and Jersey Joe Walcott.

Jacobs ridiculed the hypothesis – as one could have expected considering the publication in which the story ran – and singled out three “colored” boxers as the best of the current crop of active pugilists: Sugar Ray Robinson, Ike Williams, and Freddie Dawson.

Sugar Ray Robinson? A no-brainer. Skill-wise the greatest of the great. Even those that didn’t follow boxing, would have recognized his name. Ike Williams? Nowhere near as well-known as Robinson, but he was then the reigning lightweight champion, a man destined to go into the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the inaugural class of 1990.

And Freddie Dawson? If the name doesn’t ring a bell, dear reader, you are not alone. I confess that I too drew a blank. And that triggered a search to learn more about him.

Freddie Dawson had four fights with Ike Williams. All four were staged on Ike’s turf in Philadelphia. Were this not the case, the history books would likely show that the series knotted 2-2. Late in his career, Dawson became greatly admired in Australia. But we are jumping ahead of ourselves.

Dawson was born in 1924 in Thomasville, Arkansas, an unincorporated town in the Arkansas Delta. Likely a descendent of slaves who worked in the cotton plantations, he grew up in the so-called Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago, the heart of Chicago’s Black Belt.

The first mention of him in the newspapers came in 1941 when he won Chicago’s Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) featherweight title. In those days, amateur boxing was big in the Windy City, the birthplace of the Golden Gloves. The Catholic Archdiocese, which ran gyms in every parish, and the Chicago Parks Department, were the major incubators.

In his amateur days, he was known as simply Fred Dawson. As a pro, his name often appeared as Freddy Dawson, although Freddie gradually became the more common spelling.

Dawson, who stood five-foot-six and was often described as stocky, made his pro debut on Feb. 1, 1943, at Marigold Gardens. Before the year was out, he had 16 fights under his belt, all in Chicago and all but two at Marigold. (Currently the site of an interdenominational Christian church, Marigold Gardens, on the city’s north side, was Chicago’s most active boxing and wrestling arena from the mid-1930s through the early-1950s. Joe Louis had three of his early fights there and Tony Zale was a fixture there as he climbed the ladder to the world middleweight title.)

The last of these 16 fights was fatal for Dawson’s opponent who collapsed heading back to his corner after the fight was stopped in the 10th round and died that night at a local hospital from the effects of a brain injury.

Dawson left town after this incident and spent most of the next year in New Orleans where energetic promoter Louis Messina ran twice-weekly shows (Mondays for whites and Fridays for blacks) at the Coliseum, a major stop on boxing’s so-called Chitlin’ Circuit.

That same year, on Sept. 19, 1944, Dawson had his first encounter with Ike Williams. He was winning the fight when Ike knocked him out with a body punch in the fourth round.

The first and last meetings between Dawson and Ike Williams were spaced five years apart. In the interim, Freddie scored his two best wins, stopping Vic Patrick in the twelfth round at Sydney, NSW, and Bernard Docusen in the sixth round in Chicago.

The long-reigning lightweight champion of Australia, Patrick (49-3, 43 KOs) gave the crowd a thrill when he knocked Dawson down for a count of “six” in the penultimate 11th round, but Dawson returned the favor twice in the final stanza, ending the contest with a punch so harsh that the poor Aussie needed five minutes before he was fit to leave the ring and would spend the night in the hospital as a precaution.

Dawson fought Bernard Docusen before 10,000-plus at Chicago Stadium on Feb. 4, 1949. An 8/5 favorite, Docusen lacked a hard punch, but the New Orleans cutie had suffered only three losses in 66 fights, had never been stopped, and had extended Sugar Ray Robinson the 15-round distance the previous year.

Dawson dismantled him. Docusen managed to get back on his feet after Dawson knocked him down in the sixth, but he was in no condition to continue and the referee waived the fight off. Dawson was then vacillating between the lightweight and welterweight divisions and reporters wondered whether it would be Robinson or Ike Williams when Dawson finally got his well-earned title shot.

Sugar Ray wasn’t in his future. Here are the results of his other matches with Ike Williams:

Dawson-Williams II (Jan. 28, 1946) – The consensus on press row was 7-2-1 or 7-3 for Dawson, but the match was ruled a draw. “[The judges and referee] evidently saw [Williams] land punches that nobody else did,” said the ringside reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Dawson-Williams III (Jan. 26, 1948) – Dawson lost a majority decision. The scores were 6-4, 5-4-1, and 4-4-2. The decision was booed. Ike Williams then held the lightweight title, but this was a non-title fight. (It was tough for an outsider to get a fair shake in Philadelphia, home to Ike Williams’ co-manager Frank “Blinky” Palermo who would go to prison for his duplicitous dealings as a fight facilitator.)

Dawson-Williams IV (Dec. 5, 1949) – This would be Freddie Dawson’s only crack at a world title and he came up short. Ike Williams retained the belt, winning a unanimous decision. The fight was close – 8-7, 8-7, 9-6 – but there was no controversy.

Dawson made three more trips to Australia before his career was finished. On the first of these trips, he knocked out Jack Hassen, successor to Vic Patrick as the lightweight champion of Australia. A 1953 article in the Sydney Sunday Herald bore witness to the esteem in which Dawson was held by boxing fans in Australia: “None of our boxers could withstand his devastating attacks which not only knocked them out but also knocked years off their careers,” said the author. “It is doubtful whether any Australian boxer in any division could have beaten Dawson.”

Dawson had his final fights in the Land Down Under, finishing his career with a record of 103-14-4 while answering the bell for 962 rounds. Following what became his final fight, he had an eye operation in Sydney that was reportedly so intricate that it required a two-week hospital stay. He injured the eye again in Manila while sparring in preparation for a match with the welterweight champion of the Philippines, a match that had to be aborted because of the injury. Dawson then disappeared, by which we mean that he disappeared from the pages of the newspaper archives that allow us to construct these kinds of stories.

What about Freddie Dawson the man? A 1944 story about him said he was an outstanding all-around athlete, “a champion in all athletic undertakings – basketball, baseball, track and even jitterbugging.” A story in a Sydney paper as he was preparing to meet Vic Patrick informs us that he had two young children, ages 2 and 1, owned his own home in Chicago, and drove a two-year-old Cadillac. But beyond these flimsy snippets, Dawson the man remains elusive.

What we learned, however, is that he was one of the most underrated boxers to come down the pike in any era, a borderline Hall of Famer who ought not have fallen through the cracks. Inside the ring, this guy was one tough hombre.

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Ringside at the Fontainebleau where Mikaela Mayer Won her Rematch with Sandy Ryan

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LAS VEGAS, NV — The first meeting between Mikaela Mayer and Sandy Ryan last September at Madison Square Garden was punctuated with drama before the first punch was thrown. When the smoke cleared, Mayer had become a world-title-holder in a second weight class, taking away Ryan’s WBO welterweight belt via a majority decision in a fan-friendly fight.

The rematch tonight at the Fontainebleau in Las Vegas was another fan-friendly fight. There were furious exchanges in several rounds and the crowd awarded both gladiators a standing ovation at the finish.

Mayer dominated the first half of the fight and held on to win by a unanimous decision. But Sandy Ryan came on strong beginning in round seven, and although Mayer was the deserving winner, the scores favoring her (98-92 and 97-93 twice) fail to reflect the competitiveness of the match-up. This is the best rivalry in women’s boxing aside from Taylor-Serrano.

Mayer, 34, improved to 21-2 (5). Up next, she hopes, in a unification fight with Lauren Price who outclassed Natasha Jonas earlier this month and currently holds the other meaningful pieces of the 147-pound puzzle. Sandy Ryan, 31, the pride of Derby, England, falls to 7-3-1.

Co-Feature

In his first defense of his WBO world welterweight title (acquired with a brutal knockout of Giovani Santillan after the title was vacated by Terence Crawford), Atlanta’s Brian Norman Jr knocked out Puerto Rico’s Derrieck Cuevas in the third round. A three-punch combination climaxed by a short left hook sent Cuevas staggering into a corner post. He got to his feet before referee Thomas Taylor started the count, but Taylor looked in Cuevas’s eyes and didn’t like what he saw and brought the bout to a halt.

The stoppage, which struck some as premature, came with one second remaining in the third stanza.

A second-generation prizefighter (his father was a fringe contender at super middleweight), the 24-year-old Norman (27-0, 21 KOs) is currently boxing’s youngest male title-holder. It was only the second pro loss for Cuevas (27-2-1) whose lone previous defeat had come early in his career in a 6-rounder he lost by split decision.

Other Bouts

In a career-best performance, 27-year-old Brooklyn featherweight Bruce “Shu Shu” Carrington (15-0, 9 KOs) blasted out Jose Enrique Vivas (23-4) in the third round.

Carrington, who was named the Most Outstanding Boxer at the 2019 U.S. Olympic Trials despite being the lowest-seeded boxer in his weight class, decked Vivas with a right-left combination near the end of the second round. Vivas barely survived the round and was on a short leash when the third stanza began. After 53 seconds of round three, referee Raul Caiz Jr had seen enough and waived it off. Vivas hadn’t previously been stopped.

Cleveland welterweight Tiger Johnson, a Tokyo Olympian, scored a fifth-round stoppage over San Antonio’s Kendo Castaneda. Johnson assumed control in the fourth round and sent Castaneda to his knees twice with body punches in the next frame. The second knockdown terminated the match. The official time was 2:00 of round five.

Johnson advanced to 15-0 (7 KOs). Castenada declined to 21-9.

Las Vegas junior welterweight Emiliano Vargas (13-0, 11 KOs) blasted out Stockton, California’s Giovanni Gonzalez in the second round. Vargas brought the bout to a sudden conclusion with a sweeping left hook that knocked Gonzalez out cold. The end came at the 2:00 minute mark of round two.

Gonzalez brought a 20-7-2 record which was misleading as 18 of his fights were in Tijuana where fights are frequently prearranged.  However, he wasn’t afraid to trade with Vargas and paid the price.

Emiliano Vargas, with his matinee idol good looks and his boxing pedigree – he is the son of former U.S. Olympian and two-weight world title-holder “Ferocious” Fernando Vargas – is highly marketable and has the potential to be a cross-over star.

Eighteen-year-old Newark bantamweight Emmanuel “Manny” Chance, one of Top Rank’s newest signees, won his pro debut with a four-round decision over So Cal’s Miguel Guzman. Chance won all four rounds on all three cards, but this was no runaway. He left a lot of room for improvement.

There was a long intermission before the co-main and again before the main event, but the tedium was assuaged by a moving video tribute to George Foreman.

Photos credit: Al Applerose

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William Zepeda Edges Past Tevin Farmer in Cancun; Improves to 34-0

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William Zepeda Edges Past Tevin Farmer in Cancun; Improves to 34-0

No surprise, once again William Zepeda eked out a win over the clever and resilient Tevin Farmer to remain undefeated and retain a regional lightweight title on Saturday.

There were no knockdowns in this rematch.

The Mexican punching machine Zepeda (33-0, 17 KOs) once more sought to overwhelm Farmer (33-8-1, 9 KOs) with a deluge of blows. This rematch by Golden Boy Promotions took place in the famous beach resort area of Cancun, Mexico.

It was a mere four months ago that both first clashed in Saudi Arabia with their vastly difference styles. This time the tropical setting served as the background which suited Zepeda and his lawnmower assaults. The Mexican fans were pleased.

Nothing changed in their second meeting.

Zepeda revved up the body assault and Farmer moved around casually to his right while fending off the Mexican fighter’s attacks. By the fourth round Zepeda was able to cut off Farmer’s escape routes and targeted the body with punishing shots.

The blows came in bunches.

In the fifth round Zepeda blasted away at Farmer who looked frantic for an escape. The body assault continued with the Mexican fighter pouring it on and Farmer seeming to look ready to quit. When the round ended, he waved off his corner’s appeals to stop.

Zepeda continued to dominate the next few rounds and then Farmer began rallying. At first, he cleverly smothered Zepeda’s body attacks and then began moving and hitting sporadically. It forced the Mexican fighter to pause and figure out the strategy.

Farmer, a Philadelphia fighter, showed resiliency especially when it was revealed he had suffered a hand injury.

During the last three rounds Farmer dug down deep and found ways to score and not get hit. It was Boxing 101 and the Philly fighter made it work.

But too many rounds had been put in the bank by Zepeda. Despite the late rally by Farmer one judge saw it 114-114, but two others scored it 116-112 and 115-113 for Zepeda who retains his interim lightweight title and place at the top of the WBC rankings.

“I knew he was a difficult fighter. This time he was even more difficult,” said Zepeda.

Farmer was downtrodden about another loss but realistic about the outcome and starting slow.

“But I dominated the last rounds,” said Farmer.

Zepeda shrugged at the similar outcome as their first encounter.

“I’m glad we both put on a great show,” said Zepeda.

Female Flyweight Battle

Costa Rica’s Yokasta Valle edged past Texas fighter Marlen Esparza to win their showdown at flyweight by split decision after 10 rounds.

Valle moved up two weight divisions to meet Esparza who was slightly above the weight limit. Both showed off their contrasting styles and world class talent.

Esparza, a former unified flyweight world titlist, stayed in the pocket and was largely successful with well-placed jabs and left hooks. She repeatedly caught Valle in-between her flurries.

The current minimumweight world titlist changed tactics and found more success in the second half of the fight. She forced Esparza to make the first moves and that forced changes that benefited her style.

Neither fighter could take over the fight.

After 10 rounds one judge saw Esparza the winner 96-94, but two others saw Valle the winner 97-93 twice.

Will Valle move up and challenge the current undisputed flyweight world champion Gabriela Fundora? That’s the question.

Valle currently holds the WBC minimumweight world title.

Puerto Rico vs Mexico

Oscar Collazo (12-0, 9 KOs), the WBO, WBA minimumweight titlist, knocked out Mexico’s Edwin Cano (13-3-1, 4 KOs) with a flurry of body shots at 1:12 of the fifth round.

Collazo dominated with a relentless body attack the Mexican fighter could not defend. It was the Puerto Rican fighter’s fifth consecutive title defense.

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