Referee Mills Lane: Still Fighting At Age 78

Published

9 years ago

March 29, 2016

By BERNARD FERNANDEZ

✅ It is cruelly ironic, when you stop and think about it. Mills Lane, one of the best and most accomplished referees in boxing history, always saw himself as a protector of the individuals whose bouts he worked. Toward that end, he was an absolute stickler for enforcing the rules. If a fighter was taking too much punishment, the former Marine always knew the exact moment when he needed to step in and wrap his arms around him. In the ring, as was the case in his other duties as a district attorney and then a District Court judge in Washoe County, Nev., it was up to Lane to see that justice was served, and he never shirked his responsibility.

But there was no such protection for the protector when Mills Lane, then 64, collapsed from a stroke in his home in Reno on or about April 1, 2002. He was all alone, with no one to kneel over him or to call for the ring doctor. And so Mills Bee Lane III lay on the floor for an indeterminate length of time, any chance he might have had for an appreciable degree of recovery slipping away with each passing minute.

“When you have a stroke it’s crucial you receive treatment quickly,” said Terry Lane, the older of Lane’s two sons. “If you do you can minimize the effects of even a bad stroke. But we really can’t pinpoint when the stroke happened.

“A few months earlier, our family had become bicoastal. My brother (Tommy) had just begun high school in New York City after moving there from Reno. All of us were kind of going back and forth between Reno and New York. I had just started college in New York around that time. My mom (Kaye), my brother and I were all back East and my dad was in Reno, by himself. We really don’t know how long it was before he was found. It might have been a day, possibly as long as two days. We don’t know for sure.

“He finally was found by one of his former law partners because he missed a meeting, and Mills Lane never missed a meeting. So they knew something had to be wrong.”

Mills Lane had already retired both as a referee and as a Washoe County judge, having taken in 1998 an even higher-profile position as a dispenser of instant justice on Judge Mills Lane, a syndicated television show in which he issued rulings in the raspy voice so familiar to fight fans. But since the stroke, that voice has been forever silenced. Although his mind is said to be as sharp as ever, Lane, now 78, no longer can verbalize his thoughts. His trim and taut former athlete’s body – in addition to the remarkable fitness level he achieved in the Marine Corps, he was a former standout boxer at the University of Nevada-Reno and then as a pro, posting a 10-1 record – also has begun to fail him in a variety of ways, which stuns those who remember him as boxing’s bow-tied Energizer Bunny.

“All through his life his weight never varied by more than four or five pounds,” said a friend, New Jersey-based referee Steve Smoger. “He called himself `The welterweight.’ Ever since I’ve known him, he was always somewhere between 145 and 150.”

Added another friend, Marc Ratner, the former executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission: “Even now, it’s difficult to imagine him as a prisoner in his own body. Mills was always in such tremendous shape.”

Although Lane did attend the festivities when he was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, N.Y., on June 9, 2013, it was done so only with considerable effort on his part. It might even be said that Lane literally willed himself to be there.

“He has visibly aged,” Terry Lane acknowledged. “He broke his hip in 2012, the year before he was inducted in Canastota. Like any older person with physical limitations, he has lost a lot of energy. He can’t move around very easily. Mostly, he watches TV and lets Mom take care of him. She makes him as comfortable as she can.

“It seems like every year he receives an award for something, and while he does want to be around certain things, it’s difficult for him to physically get places. It causes him pain. For the most part, it’s Tommy and I and Mom serving as his representatives. When I got the call (from IBHOF executive director) Ed Brophy, I just assumed it would be Tommy and me going to Canastota and making a quick thank-you like we’ve done dozens of times before. But Dad was really into it. I know he was very happy to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. He can’t speak, but he still can emote and be expressive.”

Lane’s image as a no-nonsense banty rooster inside the ropes is well-deserved, but his path to Canastota and a measure of notoriety that no referee before or since has achieved began long before the boxing world came to know him as the guy who always seemed to land the kind of fights that stick in the public’s memory. Over the course of his 34-year career, he was the third man in the ring for such major or out-of-the-ordinary bouts as Muhammad Ali-Bob Foster (1972), Larry Holmes-Gerry Cooney (1982), the Evander Holyfield-Riddick Bowe II “Fan Man” Fight (1993), Oliver McCall’s bizarre crying jag against Lennox Lewis (1997) and, most notably, the Evander Holyfield-Mike Tyson II “Bite Fight” (1997).

“The visibility of the `Bite Fight’ made Mills even more mainstream,” Ratner recalled. “It almost seemed like he worked all the Super Bowls of crazy fights.”

And the craziest of all was on June 28, 1997, when Tyson twice decided to gnaw off a one-inch chunk of Holyfield’s right ear as if it were on the menu at one of the MGM Grand’s fine restaurants. Lane had no alternative but to disqualify Tyson in the third round following the second toothy infraction.

“It’s my understanding that the producers of the (eventual Judge Mills Lane) show were watching the `Bite Fight’ and one of the TV commentators mentioned that my dad was a District Court judge in Washoe County, Nevada,” Terry Lane said. “I don’t know if that sparked the idea for him doing his own show or if they wanted a Judge (Joseph) Wapner (the first of the reality-show TV judges) thing, but it definitely put Dad on a different level of attention nationally and, I guess, even globally.”

With his shaved head, distinctive growl and signature catch phrase (“Let’s get it on!”) that spawned a wave of imitators, Mills Lane now seems like the perfect candidate to have been selected for unscripted courtroom drama. But the mere fact he wound up doing any of what he’s done, given his background, makes his accomplishments even more noteworthy.

The patrician scion of a Southern dynasty in Savannah, Ga., young Mills hailed from a banking family that also had extensive plantation holdings in that state and in South Carolina. How wealthy were the Lanes? Well, the Mills B. Lane House in historic downtown Savannah, completed in 1907, was hailed as a “jewel of the antebellum South” when it was placed on the market in 2007 with an asking price of $7.6 million. It seems a safe bet that no other future referee was raised in a mansion that boasted a marble entrance, Corinthian columns, parquet floors, 29 handcrafted canvas murals, nine fireplaces, five bedrooms, eight full baths, three half-baths and a large, in-ground pool.

Mills Lane’s father went so far as to have already paid his son’s tuition at a prestigious Midwestern university, where the young man was to study agriculture, the better to prepare him for instructing field hands on the proper way to eradicate those pesky boll weevils.

But being a banker and/or gentleman farmer didn’t especially appeal to young Mills, who did not want to float through life sipping mint juleps and benefiting from a name that carried so much economic and social clouts. He apparently believed that rich kids could be rebels, too, and not just because their male ancestors once had worn plumed hats as Confederate officers.

So Mills B. Lane chucked it all in 1958 to enlist in the Marines. He took up boxing while in service to his country, becoming All-Far East welterweight champion. And when his hitch was up, he took off for Reno where, he had read in a magazine, the local university had a boxing team of some repute. After winning an NCAA boxing championship at UNR and then enjoying some success as a pro, Lane continued his journey of self-discovery, gaining his law degree and sliding seamlessly into multiple vocations in boxing and law enforcement as a referee, deputy sheriff, district attorney and judge, where his penchant for handing out stiff sentences to felonious offenders earned him the sobriquet of “Maximum Mills.”

It should come to no surprise to anyone, given Mills Lane’s determination to forge his own identity, that one of his favorite songs is the Paul Anka-written standard My Way, the most familiar versions being the ones sung by Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley.

“Dad definitely did things his way,” Terry Lane said. “When I hear that song, I always think of him. Not to take a morbid turn here, but he always said that he wanted that song played at a memorial service whenever his time comes.”

At least Mills got the opportunity to convey that wish to Terry and Tommy, who were teenagers when their father was stricken with the stroke that has deprived them of so many of the father-son chats that never took place.

“If I could have even a one-hour conversation, an adult conversation, with him, it would mean so much to me,” Terry said. “I’d want to hear why he made the choices he did, and his outlook on everything.

“Tommy and I have to piece together a lot of that in our adult lives. There’s so many questions we’d like to go to him with, and he’s sitting right there. It is frustrating. But safe to say, he’s one in a billion.”

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!

Bernard Fernandez

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

Published

41 minutes 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).

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!

TSS Salutes Thomas Hauser and his Bernie Award Cohorts

Published

2 days ago

April 16, 2025

TSS Press

TSS-Salutes-Thomas-Hauser-and-his-Bernie-Award-Cohorts

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.

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!

Mekhrubon Sanginov, whose Heroism Nearly Proved Fatal, Returns on Saturday

Published

3 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.

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 0

Share The Sweet Science experience!