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Tyson’s Bludgeoning of Biggs Another Example of Boxing’s Crueler Side

Compassion? Oh, sure, there is lots of it in boxing, if you know where to look. There is the memory of a concerned Floyd Patterson kneeling over the knocked-out Ingemar Johansson, Ingo’s left quivering uncontrollably, after the Swede had been felled by Floyd’s leaping left hook in the second of their three classic confrontations. There is WBC heavyweight champion Larry Holmes, in the process of stopping outclassed challenger Marvis Frazier in the very first round, signaling with his right hand to referee Mills Lane to step in and save Larry’s young friend from taking additional punishment.
“I met (Marvis) when he was a little-bitty kid,” Holmes, at the post fight press conference following the Nov. 25, 1983, bout in Las Vegas, said of the son of Joe Frazier, whom Holmes had long held in the highest esteem. “I was working with Joe as his sparring partner. That was one of the happiest moments of my life. I was like a kid in a candy store. It gave me a great thrill, even when Joe broke my ribs. We remained friends until the day they put him in the ground.”
But while the crucible of the ring has forged much mutual respect and more than a few lasting friendships, it also must be noted that animosity also can be the unforgiving residue of the hardest sport. Some fighters enjoy inflicting pain if they dislike their opponent or believe he has somehow done them wrong. Sometimes there doesn’t even have to be a reason for intentionally prolonging a beatdown; some great champions simply have a sadistic streak that served them well, in a professional sense.
Case in point: the Oct. 16, 1987, meeting of undisputed heavyweight champion Mike Tyson and 1984 Olympic super heavyweight gold medalist Tyrell Biggs in Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall. Tyson was seething even before the opening bell, and determined to do as much damage as was humanly possible to Biggs until the referee or ring doctor intervened.
“I was going to make him pay with his health for everything he said,” Tyson said of the revenge motive that prompted him to ease off whenever it appeared the battered Biggs was ready to go. “I could have knocked him out in the third round, but I wanted to do it very slowly. I wanted him to remember this for a long time.”
Biggs remembered, all right. Decked twice, he suffered two cuts that required 22 stitches to close – 19 above his left eye, three in his chin.
“I didn’t say anything that should have angered him,” Biggs said, incredulous that Tyson had made his destruction such a personal matter. “All I said was that I was confident I could beat him.
“There’s good guys and bad guys in wrestling, like Hulk Hogan and Ivan the Terrible. Well, I think Mike Tyson is the Ivan the Terrible of boxing.”
Truth be told, Tyson’s resentment of Biggs far predated anything that went on in the weeks preceding their actual meeting in the ring. They both were at the Olympic Trials in 1984, when Tyson was a callow teenager still in the process of refining his skills. Henry Tillman, who would not make it out of the first round against Tyson as a pro, instead was the United States’ heavyweight representative in Los Angeles.
In Tyson’s book, “Undisputed Truth,” he claims that Biggs belittled him at the Olympic Trials. When a woman approached Biggs to wish him and his newly certified teammates luck in the Olympics, and Biggs, nodding at Tyson, allegedly said, “He certainly ain’t getting on that plane.”
Any resentment Tyson may have harbored toward Biggs bubbled up after the fight was announced, with Biggs and chatty cornerman Lou Duva expressing their belief that Tyson was overrated and beatable.
“He’s never fought anyone like me,” Biggs said at the final prefight press conference. “I don’t know this Tyson, the way you guys (media) talk about him. I know Tyson from way back when. He’s strong, but his strength will not hurt me.”
It might have been typical bluster on the part of Biggs and Duva to hype the event, but Tyson was building up a rage inside himself that would be unleashed like a volcano on fight night.
“I want to hurt him bad,” he said of his plan for Biggs. And so he did.
“When I was hitting him with body punches, I heard him actually crying in there, making woman gestures,” a smirking Tyson said. “I knew that he was breaking down. I was very calm and I was thinking about Roberto Duran, how he used to cut down the runners and just wear them down. I had that frame of mind when I was in the ring. I wasn’t even thinking about (targeting Biggs’) cut. I was thinking about hitting him to the body – softening him up.”
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that Tyson would reference Duran, whose mercilessness as he went about his work had made him Tyson’s hero and role model. What Tyson had tried to do to Biggs, and largely succeeded in achieving, was what Duran, the “Hands of Stone,” had done to a pretty good lightweight named Ray Lampkin when he sought to dethrone Duran, the WBA 135-pound titlist, on March 2, 1975, in Panama City, Panama.
As was the case with Biggs a dozen years later, Lampkin had made some seemingly innocuous remarks about how he thought Duran might be ready to be taken. And, as Tyson did against Biggs, the imperious Duran, who once said, “I’m not God, but something similar,” had used that as fuel for his fury.
“They were trying to make Duran out to be this Superman character,” Lampkin had said in the lead-up to the fight. “He’s human, and when you cut him he bleeds, just like I do. They’re acting like he can’t be beat, but I saw Esteban (DeJesus) do it.”
Unfortunately for Lampkin, he wasn’t Esteban DeJesus on a night that he needed to be more than he was. Duran, who also was a master of backing off when an opponent was on the verge of toppling, finally closed the deal in the 14th round. So damaged was Lampkin that he was unconscious for over an hour, and remained hospitalized for five days.
“I was not in my best condition,” Duran said in assessing his brutally effective performance. “Today I sent him to the hospital. Next time I’ll put him in the morgue.” It was a quote that forever defined Duran as a remorseless assailant. And while Lampkin recovered enough to resume his career, he was never the same.
“That was the fight that sent me downhill into retirement,” he said. “I never recuperated. I wanted to make myself believe that I did, but I kept getting hurt.”
Before he did what he did to Biggs, Tyson worked faster but just as devastatingly against Marvis Frazier on July 26, 1986, in Glen Falls, N.Y., four months prior to the 20-year-old Tyson winning his first heavyweight championship. The fight lasted just a half-minute, with Tyson going after Frazier like a ravenous wolf going after a slab of raw meat. But that was just the way he always fought, right? Well, maybe so, but there are those who believed then, and still do, that Tyson had more motivation than usual to make a statement against the son of the great Smokin’ Joe.
An unfailingly polite sort who is now a minister, Marvis didn’t really say anything that might have served to inflame Tyson. But Joe did, although his comments on how Marvis would handle Tyson was interpreted by some as how the elder Frazier thought he would do if only he could go back in time and be the one swapping haymakers with the young Iron Mike.
“I don’t see who (Tyson) really has beaten,” Joe said is dismissing Tyson as a false creation of the Cus D’Amato/Jimmy Jacobs hype machine. “You need to sit him down and teach him things instead of having him fight all the time against somebody who ain’t nobody. Putting him in the ring and having him knock out somebody who needs to be in the house cooking, it don’t make any sense. I don’t know how that’s going to make him champion.
“Marvis will be moving all the time. When he jumps in to fight, he’ll fight. He won’t be standing there holding hands and playing around.”
Beau Williford, who had trained Tyson victims James “Quick” Tillis and Lorenzo Boyd, understood how Tyson would react to Joe’s taunting. There would be hell to pay, and Marvis was the one who would do the paying.
“Tyson will eat him alive, spit him out and step on him,” Williford said of what Marvis could expect. “And if the old man keeps running his mouth, Mike will knock him out, too.”
A prime-on-prime matchup of Joe Frazier and Tyson, so similar in style and physical attributes, would be on any fight fan’s list of dream fights, if only wishing could make it so. But Smokin’ Joe did get it on three times with Muhammad Ali, who also gets a couple of nods as someone who could find the darker recesses within himself as the occasion warranted.
One such instance was Ali’s 12th-round stoppage of Floyd Patterson in Nov. 22, 1965, in Las Vegas, Ali’s second defense of his heavyweight championship and the first after he had scored that controversial first-round knockout of Sonny Liston in their rematch in Lewiston, Maine.
Ali, of course, had changed his name from Cassius Clay at that point, although Patterson was unwilling to identify him as such.
“I have been told Clay has every right to follow any religion he chooses, and I agree,” Patterson said. “But by the same token, I have the right to call the Black Muslims a menace to the United States and a menace to the Negro race … I do not believe God put us here to hate one another. Cassius Clay must be beaten and the Black Muslims’ scourge removed from boxing.”
Ali set out to not only defeat Patterson, but to humiliate him and to make him suffer for his temerity. Time and again Ali seemingly had Patterson teetering on the abyss, and time and again Ali backed off to allow the former champ time to recover and thus be pounded on some more.
By the 12th round, even Ali’s trainer, Angelo Dundee, had tired of the cat-and-mouse game. “Knock him out, for chrissake,” Dundee implored his fighter, who decided to do as requested. That 12th-round stoppage could have and probably would have come much earlier had Ali not been toying with Patterson, or had Floyd not been so obstinate in the face of certain defeat.
“It was hurting me to watch,” said referee Harry Krause, who wanted to step in numerous times but was hesitant to do so because Patterson was doing all he could to try to fight back. “Patterson was hopelessly outclassed. He lobbed his punches like a feeble old woman.”
Another Ali opponent, Ernie Terrell, would discover, as Patterson had, that there were consequences to referring to Ali as “Clay,” even if it was mostly unintentional.
Prior to their Feb. 6, 1967, bout in Houston’s Astrodome, Terrell, the WBA heavyweight champion, said the name that could set Ali off as nothing else could.
“I wasn’t trying to insult him,” Terrell is quoted as saying in “Muhammad Ali” His Life and Times,” by author Thomas Hauser. “He’d been Cassius Clay to me all the time before when I knew him. Then he told me, `My name’s Muhammad Ali.’ And I said fine, but by then he was going, `Why can’t you call me Muhammad Ali? You’re just an Uncle Tom.’
“Well, like I said, I didn’t mean no harm. But when I saw that calling him `Clay’ bugged him, I kept it going. To me it was just part of building up the promotion.”
But what’s good for the goose isn’t necessarily good for the gander. Although Ali would say his calling Joe Frazier a “gorilla” and “ignorant” was simply a means of building up the promotion of their fights, Frazier didn’t think that should have been the case. And neither did Ali when Terrell made the mistake of calling him Clay. From the eighth round on, Ali taunted Terrell, shouting time and again, “What’s my name?,” followed by bursts of blows to Terrell’s badly swollen eyes.
Tex Maule, writing in “Sports Illustrated,” concluded that Ali had engaged in “a wonderful demonstration of boxing skill and a barbarous display of cruelty.”
It is both elements – the compassion and sportsmanship, to be sure, but also the undeniable element of meanness – that go into the bubbling brew that makes boxing so compelling a reflection of the human condition. As Puerto Rican poet Martin Espada once noted, “Violence is terribly seductive; all of us, especially males, are trained to gaze upon violence until it becomes beautiful.”
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Avila Perspective, Chap. 317: Callum Walsh, Dana White and More

As Callum Walsh stood on the observation deck at the top of the Empire State Building with fists clenched, it harked back to actor Jimmy Cagney, an actor of Irish descent, yelling “Top of the world, ma,” in the 1949 motion picture White Heat.
The Irish-born Walsh brings that kind of attitude.
Once again Walsh (12-0, 10 KOs) returns to New York City and this time faces Scottish warrior Dean Sutherland (19-1, 7 KOs) in a super welterweight match set for 10 rounds on Sunday, March 16, at Madison Garden Theater.
UFC Fight Pass will stream the 360 Promotions event.
Flanked by master trainer Freddie Roach and managed by Dana White it brings questions as to the direction that Walsh will be steered. It was just revealed that White will head a new boxing promotion outfit with big plans to make a more UFC type of organization.
Is Walsh part of the plans?
It’s a lot to digest as the hot prospect from Cork, Ireland proceeds toward world championship dreams. Can he cleanse his mind of this major distraction?
Walsh and Sutherland are both southpaws who are meeting at the crossroads in the heart of New York City. At this point of their careers a loss can mean rebooting and taking a few steps backward. The winner moves on to the next crucial step.
Sutherland, 26, hails from Aberdeen and has never fought outside of his native Scotland. It’s a lot to ask of someone whose country’s population of 5 million is dwarfed by New York City’s 8.2 million inhabitants all packed together.
Ireland’s population is also 5 million. So basically, both Walsh and Sutherland are on even terms when they enter the prize ring on Sunday.
Who knows what kind of competition Sutherland faced in Scotland. He beat two undefeated fighters and also conquered two foes who each had more than 100 losses on their resumes.
Meanwhile, Walsh has faced only one undefeated fighter but handled veterans like Benjamin Whitaker, Ismael Villareal and Carlos Ortiz Cervantes. But you never know until they meet face to face. Anything can happen in a prize ring.
Walsh has a three-fight knockout streak. Sutherland has slept two out of his last three foes. They will be joined by several Irish fighters on the card plus Cletus “The Hebrew Hammer” Seldin.
Dana, Turk and TKO
The announcement earlier in the week that Turki Alalshikh together with TKO Group Holdings that include Dana White and Nick Khan formed a new boxing promotion company.
White, who does not own UFC but guides the MMA ship, works for Endeavor, the parent company of UFC and WWE. Their events are all shown on ESPN, the powerful sports network (albeit WWE’s flagship weekly show “Raw” recently moved to Netflix). It seems Endeavor has decided to allow White to guide its boxing program too.
Where does that leave Top Rank?
It seems the partnership plans to rid boxing of the many sanctioning organizations and have only one champion per division. The champion will be given a Ring Magazine belt. Recently, Turki Alalshikh purchased The Ring magazine from Golden Boy Promotions. This seems to have been the plan all along.
Is this good for boxing?
Mark Shapiro, the president of TKO Group Holdings, said:
“This is a strategic opportunity to re-imagine the sport of boxing globally. TKO has the deep expertise, promotional prowess, and longstanding relationships. HE Turki Alalshikh and Sela share our passion and vision for evolving the current model. Together, we can bring the sweet science back to its rightful place in the forefront of the global sports ecosystem.”
DAZN all day
Three boxing cards take place on Saturday beginning with WBA featherweight titlist Nick Ball (21-0-1) the human cannonball, defending against former champion TJ Doheny from Liverpool, England. The first bout begins around 9:30 a.m. (Pacific Coast Time). Ball likes to charge forward and punch. Doheny is no slouch and has experience.
Later, Matchroom Boxing presents a show from Florida that features Edgar Berlanga (22-1) fresh off a solid contest against Canelo Alvarez. He fights undefeated Jonathan Gonzalez-Ortiz (20-0-1) in a super middleweight match. Also, Ammo Williams (17-1) returns to face dangerous Patrice Volny (19-1) in a middleweight clash. The card starts at 3:30 p.m. (Pacific Coast Time.
Saturday evening MarvNation presents Amado Vargas (11-0) meeting Eduardo Hernandez (8-2) in a super lightweight contest at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, California. Start time is set for 8 p.m. (Pacific Coast Time). The son of the great Fernando Vargas remains undefeated.
Fights to Watch
Sat. DAZN 11:30 a.m. Nick Ball (21-0-1) vs TJ Doheny (26-5).
Sat. DAZN 3:30 p.m. Edgar Berlanga (22-1) vs Jonathan Gonzalez-Ortiz (20-0-1) ; Ammo Williams (17-1) vs Patrice Volny (19-1).
Sat. DAZN 8 p.m. Amado Vargas (11-0) vs Eduardo Hernandez (8-2).
Sun. UFC Fight Pass 3 p.m. Callum Walsh (12-0) vs Dean Sutherland (19-1).
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A Fresh Face on the Boxing Scene, Bryce Mills Faces His Toughest Test on Friday

“He wants to test himself and find out just how good he really is,” said International Boxing Hall of Fame promoter Russell Peltz regarding super lightweight Bryce Mills. Peltz, who has dealt with a wide range of fighters throughout his lifetime in boxing, recognized the fire that burned inside Mills at a local show in Philadelphia in early 2022. At the time Mills had less than ten professional fights under his belt.
Mills hails from Liverpool in upstate New York and trains in nearby Syracuse. Currently 17-1 (6 KOs), he’s undefeated in his last 11 since losing a split decision to a Puerto Rican fighter from the Bronx who had fought much stiffer competition.
The fight in question that caught Peltz’s eye was arranged by the well-known and respected matchmaker Nick Tiberi who paired Mills in an intriguing fight against Daiyaan Butt, a tough and skilled fighter from the Philadelphia area. They fought at LIVE Casino in South Philadelphia on Feb. 24, 2022.
Although the crowd on hand that night favored Butt, Mills, although then only 20 years old, wasn’t intimidated and was the clear-cut winner at the end of their exciting, back-and-forth battle. This showed Peltz that Mills was serious about seeing just how far his ability could take him.
That’s why Peltz decided to join forces with Mills. Despite being semi-retired, Peltz is still active enough to help guide fighters through the ever-changing wild west landscape that is boxing. Since their union after Mill’s victory over Butt, Mills has been on a nine-fight winning streak heading into what Peltz believes is the toughest test of his career this Friday against Alex Martin 18-6 (6 KOs) of Chicago.
“I didn’t want him to take this fight, it’s a dangerous fight for him. Martin is a southpaw and is tricky, he’s a veteran and is experienced. His father (Mills’s father) called me and said that Bryce wanted the fight, to his credit,” says Peltz. One look at Martin’s resume and it confirms what Peltz stated. All six of Martin’s losses came against fighters with outstanding records including a former world title challenger. Martin also holds some quality wins over undefeated prospects that were at similar points in their careers to where Mills currently is in his development.
Bryce Mills looks like a fighter (he’s always in shape), acts like a fighter (testing his craft against all comers), walks the walk of a fighter, and fights with a fan-friendly pedal-to-the-metal style. That is a winning combination that could be the breath of fresh air the boxing world could surely use and on Friday night at the Wind Creek Events Center in Bethlehem, PA, live on DAZN, Mills is going to have the opportunity to put the boxing world on notice.
***
DAZN will televise the Mills-Martin fight along with a main event that features undefeated middleweight Euri Cedeno (10-0-1, 9 KO’s) against Ulices Rivera (11-1, 7 KO’s). Knockout artist Joseph Adorno (20-4-1, 17 KOs) and undefeated Reading, PA super featherweight Julian Gonzalez (15-0-1, 11 KOs) appear in separate bouts on the undercard. Tickets for the Marshall Kauffman’s Kings Promotion show are still available through Ticketmaster. Lobby doors open at 5:00 pm. First bell is at 7:00.
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High Drama in Japan as ‘Amazing Boy’ Kenshiro Teraji Overcomes Seigo Yuri Akui

Overshadowed by countrymen Naoya Inoue and Junto Nakatani, Kenshiro Teraji embossed his Hall of Fame credentials in Tokyo tonight with a dramatic 12th-round stoppage of Seigo Yuri Akui. At stake were two pieces of the world flyweight title. A two-time world title-holder a division below (108), Teraji (25-1, 16 KOs) was appearing in his 16th world title fight.
This Japan vs. Japan matchup will go down in Japanese boxing lore as one of the best title fights ever on Japanese soil. Through the 11 completed rounds, Akui was up 105-104 on two of the cards with Teraji up 106-103 on the third. However, judging by his appearance, Akui was more damaged. The stoppage by Japanese referee Katsuhiko Nakamura, which came at the 1:31 mark of the final round with Akui still standing, struck some as premature but the gallant Akui was well-beaten.
A second-generation prizefighter, Kenshiro Teraji, 33, came bearing the WBC 112-pound belt which he acquired this past October with an 11th round TKO of Nicaraguan veteran Cristofer Rosales. The 29-year-old Akui (21-3-1) was making the second defense of the WBA strap he won with a wide decision over previously undefeated Artem Dalakian.
Although Teraji keeps on rolling – this was his seventh straight win which began with a third-round blast-out of Masamichi Yabuki, avenging his lone defeat – things aren’t getting any easier for the so-called “Amazing Boy.” In his last three fights, which include a hard-earned majority decision over Carlos Canizales, he answered the bell for 35 rounds.
By and large, fighters in his weight class don’t age well. While Teraji is starting to slip, he has no intention of retiring any time soon. His goal, he says is to unify the title and eventually move up a notch to pursue a world title in a third weight class. The other pieces of the 112-pound title are currently the property of Mexico’s Angel Ayala who defends his IBF diadem against Yabuki later this month and LA’s Anthony Olascuaga who was in action on tonight’s undercard.
Other Bouts of Note
Olascuaga, a stablemate of Junto Nakatani, trained by 2024 TSS Trainer of the Year Rudy Hernandez, advanced to 9-1 (6) with a hard-earned unanimous decision over Hiroto Kyoguchi. The judges had it 118-110 and 117-111 (scores condemned as too wide) with the third judge having it 6-6 in rounds but scoring it 114-113 in acknowledgement of the knockdown credited to Olascuaga in round 11, the result of a short left that produced a delayed reaction.
Olascuaga was making the second defense of his WBO belt in his fifth straight trip to Japan. In his lone defeat, he was thrust against the formidable Teraji as a late sub, acquitting himself well in defeat (L TKO 9) despite having only five pro fights under his belt and having only 10 days to prepare. Kyoguchi (19-3) had previously held titles in the sport’s two smallest weight classes.
In a big upset, Puerto Rico’s Rene Santiago, thought to be well past his prime at age 32, wrested the WBO light flyweight title with a unanimous decision over Shokichi Iwata who was making the first defense of the title he won with a third-round stoppage of Spain’s previously undefeated Jairo Noriega. Tokyo’s Iwata was a consensus 9/1 favorite.
Santiago, who advanced to 14-4 (9), won by scores of 118-110, 117-111, and 116-112. It was the second loss for Iwata who had knocked out 11 of his first 15 opponents.
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