Catching Up With IBHOF Class of 2016 Inductee Hilario Zapata

Published

8 years ago

June 10, 2016

Inductee Hilario Zapata – Panama’s Hilario Zapata is remembered as one of the fighters with the most championship rounds ever fought, and his accomplishments in the rings may exceed that already extraordinary achievement. But he has always kept his true goal close to his heart.

“The thing I wanted to do the most, the first thing I told to every writer who ever interviewed me was: ‘I have to become greater than Roberto Duran, because he was always winning, and I was winning my fights too, and (Eusebio) Pedroza was winning and we all had a competition going,” said Zapata, a former two-division champion who will be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, NY, this coming Sunday. “That was my motivation in boxing. And now that I have entered the Hall of Fame, I finally matched his accomplishment. Roberto is there, I am there now, and for me it is a source of pride to be next to him.”

Not only will the legendary Duran, arguably the most popular and best Latin American fighter ever, be next to Zapata in the growing list of legends inducted into the Hall of Fame, but Duran will also be literally at his side on Sunday to be the first one to congratulate him. Their healthy neighborhood rivalry for street bragging rights and title belts is long behind them now, and they have found a common ground as compatriots, as former fighters, and now as legends.

Zapata, who was named “The Sparkplug” in his heyday due to his lightning speed and jerky, sudden movements in the ring, was born in El Chorrillo, the same Panamanian slum in which Duran woke up every day determined to leave the place behind. And they both did. But first, the mean streets of the old barrio taught them lessons that they never forgot, and made them who they are today.

“I was a street brawler,” reminisces Zapata, talking about his rough childhood. “I was always fighting in school and in the streets. Not a day went by at school in which I didn’t fight. I used to defend other people, and find any excuse to fight. Until it came to a point where I said ‘I am not defending anyone else, if they want me to fight for them I have to get paid’,” said Zapata who rapidly figured out how to set up a reasonable fee structure that every one of his friends in distress could afford when it came to request a whooping to one of their foes.

“If someone wanted me to beat a guy who wasn’t much bigger than me, that was 25 cents. That’s what I charged. If the guy was bigger, it was 50 cents. That was a lot of money back then. And then I started as an amateur and had a great run”, he said, claiming about 175 amateur fights to his credit with only three losses. “And when I became a professional I had one goal in mind, which was to become a world champion, and I got it.”

And he did it with a victory in Japan against Shigeo Nakajima in what was only his 12^th professional bout, and his third one abroad. An accomplishment worthy of consideration, indeed, if only because it became merely the start of a legendary run in which he held the light flyweight title twice and the flyweight title as well, becoming second on the list of the most championship rounds ever fought with 304, right behind Emile Griffith’s 310. And he did it with a highly technical boxing style that allowed him to jump in and out of danger while connecting continuously with both hands from his awkward southpaw stance, always staying unpredictable and dangerous.

None of those goals, however, were there at the beginning of his career, when his one obsession had a name that he still mentions with a mix of reverence and veiled envy.

“When Duran lost his first fight and it became a competition between Pedroza and me, I thought ‘I have to keep up anyway, because Cholo will come back and he’ll be breathing on my neck again’. And of course, Cholo got back in the game and became champion again, and then I lost my title, but I worked hard to regain my title and I did, and said ‘I have to go on, because I must one-up Duran’, that was my wish. I wanted to be great, like Cholo, and even better. For me, this was an incentive to achieve everything I achieved, because everything I did in my career I did it to try to beat Roberto Duran.”

With Duran already in his fold as a friend and ally, the only remaining goal in Zapata’s career became to catch up with his two former enemies by earning the one honor that had been denied to him so far: the induction into the Boxing Hall of Fame.

That frustration ended with a call from WBA president Gilberto Mendoza.

“’Hilario, are you ready for the news?,’” recalls Zapata, when asked about how Mendoza told him about his induction. “He said ‘you got into the Hall of Fame’ and I started laughing with joy, so much so that even my hair was messed up, I looked like a cat. I said ‘no way, you’re lying’, but it was true, and my heart was beating fast and I was so excited. I was nominated on 17 occasions for the Hall of Fame, and I didn’t expect to enter this time. It wasn’t just the time I expected to be elected; it was the moment in which God wanted me to be inducted. It was now, and I thank God for this privilege.”

After giving the deities their due, it was time to call the IBHOF and express his gratitude

“I told him how excited I was to be in the same place of honor with Roberto Duran, with Panama Al Brown, that great boxer we had, Ismael Laguna, Eusebio Pedroza, and other glories,” recalls Zapata about his brief phone conversation with IBHOF director Ed Brophy. “And now it is my turn, I am the fifth Panamanian to be inducted”.

He is also a part of a group of three 2016 inductees that share the common trait of being proud Latino fighters representing different Central American countries.

“This is a great situation, because all three of us are very deserving of this honor”, said Zapata, about his fellow inductees. “Lupe Pintor is an excellent boxer and former champion, a warrior like all Mexicans. And what can we say about Macho Camacho? A man who acted crazy, but in all his craziness he had great fights. I am happy for him, even though he won’t be with us to celebrate that, but I feel happy to be honored alongside those two great fighters that are Lupe and Macho.”

Today, Zapata lives in Panama City and works at the headquarters of the Banco Hipotecario, a mortgage banking institution, as a messenger and mailroom attendant, living a quiet life with his wife and surrounded by friends. But his transit to a non-boxing life was marred by the usual problems that prizefighters have endured when making this adjustment.

“After my fight with (Amado Ursua), I made a mistake that no one should make. I got into drugs, but I finally made it out of that world. My career went down and up, and up and down again. At one point I felt that my work of so many years was going to be lost, and I had to decide between drugs and boxing, and unfortunately took the wrong path.”

Later, in more desperate times, he sought refuge in the word of the Lord, and he found the solace he craved for and a new chance to get his life back on track.

“I asked God for forgiveness, and I made a pact with God that remains unbroken up to this day. He has blessed me with His guidance,” said Zapata, who claims to be 16 years sober.

Aside from his job and his family life, Zapata runs a boxing program called “No to drugs, yes to sports,” in which youngsters compete for a special title created by Zapata and with the support of the Panamanian government, his fellow boxers and others who have gone through his same situation.

“I do this with the notion that the fighters have to understand the problem of drugs, because they are invited to listen to former addicts and alcoholics as part of the event, and they give testimony about how my life was and how I was able to overcome this situation,” said Zapata.

Editor’s note: Diego Morilla writes from Argentina. Tomorrow he catches up with fellow IBHOF inductee Lupe Pintor. Check The Boxing Channel for our continued coverage of Hall of Fame Weekend direct from Canastota.

Inductee Hilario Zapata

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 289: East LA, Claressa Shields and More

Published

1 day ago

July 25, 2024

David A. Avila

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 289: East LA, Claressa Shields and More

East Los Angeles has long been a haven for some of the best fighters around if you can keep them out of trouble. For every Oscar De La Hoya or Seniesa Estrada there are thousands derailed by crime, drugs or drinking.

Boxing has always been a favorite sport of East L.A. Every family has an uncle or two who boxes.

On Friday, 360 Promotions’ Omar Trinidad (15-0-1) fights Viktor Slavinskyi (15-2-1) in the main event at Commerce Casino, in Commerce, CA. UFC Fight Pass will stream the fight card.

The City of Commerce used to be part of East L.A. until 1960 when it incorporated. It’s still considered to be part of East Los Angeles, but informally.

Plenty of fighters come out of East L.A. but few make it all the way like De La Hoya and Estrada. Will Trinidad be the one?

The first world champion from East L.A. or “East Los” as some call it, was Solly Garcia Smith back in the late 1800s. Others were Richie Lemos, Art Frias and Joey Olivo. There is also 1984 Olympic gold medalist Paul Gonzalez.

Once again 360 Promotions brings its popular brand of fights to the area. On this fight card includes two female bouts. One features Roxy Verduzco (1-0) the former amateur star fighting Colleen Davis (3-1-1) in a featherweight fight.

All that action takes place on Friday.

Elite Boxing

The next day, also in East L.A., Elite Boxing stages another boxing card at Salesian High School located at 960 S. Soto Street in the Boyle Heights area of East Los Angeles.

Elite Boxing has promoted several successful boxing cards at the Catholic high school grounds. The area is saturated by many of the best eateries in Los Angeles. Don’t take my word for it. Check it out yourself and grab some of that delicious food.

Boxing has long been a favorite sport of anyone who lives in East L.A. It’s a fight town equal to Philadelphia, Brooklyn or Detroit. There’s something different about the area. For more than 100 years some of the best fighters continue to come out of its boxing gyms. Some will be performing on these club shows.

For tickets or information go to www.eliteboxingusa.com

Claressa Shields in Detroit

Speaking of fight towns, pound-for-pound best Claressa Shields who won two Olympic Gold Medals in boxing, moves up another weight division to tackle the WBC heavyweight world champion Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse on Saturday, July 27, at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, Michigan.

DAZN will stream the heavy-duty fight card.

Shields (14-0) cleaned out the super welterweight, middleweight and super middleweight divisions and now wants to add the big girls to her conquests. She will be facing Canada’s Lepage-Joanisse (7-1) who holds the WBC belt.

The last time Shields gloved up was more than a year ago when she fought Maricela Cornejo. Don’t blame Shields. She loves to fight. She loves to win. The last time Shields lost a fight was in the amateurs and that was three presidential administrations ago.

Shields doesn’t lose.

I wonder if Las Vegas even takes bets on her fights?

The only fight she may have been an underdog was against Savannah Marshall who was the last opponent to defeat her. And that was in 2012 in China. When they met as pros two years ago, Shields avenged her loss with a blistering attack.

Don’t get Shields mad.

Perhaps her toughest foe as a pro was in her pro debut when she clashed with Franchon Crews-Dezurn in Las Vegas. It was four rounds of fists and fury as the two pounded each other on the undercard of Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev in November 2016.

That was a ferocious debut for both female pugilists.

Assisting Shields on this fight card will be several intriguing male bouts. One guy you should pay special attention is Tito Mercado (15-0, 14 KOs) a super lightweight prospect from Pomona, California.

Many excellent fighters have come out of Pomona including Sugar Shane Mosley, Shane Mosley Jr., Alberto Davila and Richie Sandoval who just passed away this week.

Sandoval was best known for his 15-round war with Philadelphia’s Jeff Chandler for the bantamweight world title in 1984. Read the story by Arne K. Lang on this link: https://tss.ib.tv/boxing/featured-boxing-articles-boxing-news-videos-rankings-and-results/81467-former-world-bantamweight-champion-richie-sandoval-passes-away-at-age-63 .

Fights to Watch

Fri. UFC Fight Pass 7 p.m. Omar Trinidad (15-0-1) vs Viktor Slavinskyi (15-2-1).

Sat. ESPN+ 12:30 p.m. Joe Joyce (16-2) vs Derek Chisora (34-13).

Sat. DAZN 3 p.m. Claressa Shields (14-0) vs Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse (7-1), Michel Rivera (25-1) vs Hugo Roldan (22-2-1); Tito Mercado (15-0) vs Hector Sarmiento (21-2).

Omar Trinidad photo by Lina Baker

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Arne’s Almanac: Jake Paul and Women’s Boxing, a Curmudgeon’s Take

Published

2 days ago

July 24, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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Jake Paul can fight more than a little. The view from here is that he would make it interesting against any fringe contender in the cruiserweight division. However, Jake’s boxing acumen pales when paired against his skill as a flim-flam artist.

Jake brought a 9-1 record into last weekend’s bout with Mike Perry. As noted by boxing writer Paul Magno, Jake’s previous opponents consisted of “a You Tuber, a retired NBA star, five retired MMA stars, a part-time boxer/reality TV star, and two undersized and inactive fall-guy boxers.”

Mike Perry, a 32-year-old Floridian, was undefeated (6-0, 3 KOs) as a bare-knuckle boxer after forging a 14-8 record in UFC bouts. In pre-fight blurbs, Perry was billed as the baddest bare knuckle boxer of all time, but against Jake Paul he proved to have very unrefined skills as a conventional boxer which Team Paul undoubtedly knew all along. Perry lasted into the eighth round in a one-sided fight that could have been stopped a lot sooner.

Jake Paul is both a boxer and a promoter. As a promoter, he handles Amanda Serrano, one of the greatest female boxers in history. That makes him the person most responsible (because the buck stops with him) for the wretched mismatch in last Saturday’s co-feature, the bout between Serrano and Stevie Morgan.

Morgan, who took up boxing two years ago at age 33, brought a 14-1 record. Nicknamed the Sledgehammer, she had won 13 of her 14 wins by knockout, eight in the opening round. However, although she resides in Florida, all but one of those 13 knockouts happened in Colombia.

“We found that in Colombia there were just more opportunities for women’s boxing than in the United States,” she told a prominent boxing writer whose name we won’t mention.

The truth is that, for some folks, Colombia is the boxing equivalent of a feeder lot for livestock, a place where a boxer can go to fatten their record. The opportunities there were no greater than in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1995. It was there that Peter McNeeley prepped for his match with Mike Tyson with a 6-second knockout of professional punching bag Frankie Hines. (Six seconds? So it would be written although no one seems to have been there to witness it.)

Serrano vs Morgan was understood to be a stay-busy fight for Amanda whose rematch with Katie Taylor was postponed until November. Stevie Morgan, to her credit, answered the bell for the second round whereas others in her situation would have remained on the stool and invented an injury to rationalize it. Thirty-eight seconds later it was all over and Ms. Morgan was free to go home and use her sledgehammer to do some light dusting.

The Paul-Perry and Serrano-Morgan fights played out in a sold-out arena in Tampa before an estimated 17,000. Those without a DAZN subscription paid $64.95 for the livestream. Paul’s next promotion, where he will touch gloves with 58-year-old Mike Tyson (unless Iron Mike pulls a Joe Biden and pulls out; a capital idea) with Serrano-Taylor II the semi-main, will almost certainly rake in more money than any other boxing promotion this year.

Asked his opinion of so-called crossover boxing by a reporter for a college newspaper, the venerable boxing promoter Bob Arum said, “It’s not my bag but folks who don’t like it shouldn’t get too worked up over it because no one is stealing from anybody.” True enough, but for some of us, the phenomenon is distressing.

—

The next big women’s fight happens Saturday in Detroit where Claressa Shields seeks a world title in a third weight class against WBC heavyweight belt-holder Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse.

A two-time Olympic gold medalist, undefeated in 14 fights as a pro, Shields is very good, arguably the best female boxer of her generation which makes her, arguably, the best female boxer of all time. But turning away Lepage-Joanisse (7-1, 2 KOs) won’t elevate her stature in our eyes.

Purportedly 17-4 as an amateur, the Canadian won her title in her second crack at it. Back in August of 2017, she challenged Cancun’s Alejandra Jimenez in Cancun and was stopped in the third round. Entering the bout, Lepage-Joanisse was 3-0 as a pro and had never fought a match slated for more than four rounds.

Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse

True, on the women’s side, the heavyweight bracket is a very small pod. A sanctioning body has to make concessions to harness a sanctioning fee. Nonetheless, how absurd that a woman who had answered the bell for only 11 rounds would be deemed qualified to compete for a world title. (FYI: Alejandra Jimenez was purportedly born a man. She left the sport with a 12-0-1 record after her win over Franchon Crews Dazurn was changed to a no-contest when she tested positive for the banned steroid stanozolol.)

Following her defeat to Jimenez, Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse, now 29 years old, was out of action for six-and-a-half years. When she returned, she was still a heavyweight, but a much slender heavyweight. She carried 231 pounds for Jimenez. In her most recent bout where she captured the vacant WBC title with a split decision over Argentina’s Abril Argentina Vidal, she clocked in at 173 ¼. (On the distaff side, there’s no uniformity among the various sanctioning bodies as to what constitutes a heavyweight.)

Claressa Shields doesn’t need Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse to reinforce her credentials as a future Hall of Famer. She made the cut a long time ago.

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Former World Bantamweight Champion Richie Sandoval Passes Away at Age 63

Published

4 days ago

July 22, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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Richie Sandoval, who won the WBA and lineal bantamweight title in one of the biggest upsets of the 1980s and then, not quite two years later, suffered near-fatal injuries in a title defense, has passed away at the age of 63.

News circulated fast in the Las Vegas boxing community on Monday, July 22, the grapevine actuated by a tweet from Hall of Fame matchmaker Bruce Trampler: “Boxing and the Top Rank family lost one of our own last night in the passing of former WBA bantamweight champion Richie Sandoval. It hurts personally and professionally to know that Richie is gone at age 63. RIP campeon.”

Details are vague but the cause of death was apparently a sudden heart attack that Sandoval experienced while visiting the Southern California home of his son of the same name.

Richie Sandoval put the LA County community of Pomona, California, on the boxing map before Shane Mosley came along and gave the town a more frequently-cited mention in the sports section of the papers. He came from a fighting family. An older brother, Albert “Superfly” Sandoval, became a big draw at LA’s fabled Olympic Auditorium while building a 35-2-1 record that included a failed bid to capture Lupe Pintor’s world bantamweight title.

Richie was a member of the 1980 U.S. Olympic boxing team that was stranded when U.S. President Jimmy Carter (and many other world leaders) boycotted the event as a protest against Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan.

As a pro, Sandoval’s signature win was a 15^th-round stoppage of Jeff Chandler. They fought on April 7, 1984 in Atlantic City. Chandler was making the tenth defense of his world bantamweight title.

Despite being a heavy underdog, Sandoval dominated the fight, winning almost every round until the referee stepped in and waived it off. Chandler, who was 33-1-2 heading in and had avenged his lone defeat, never fought again.

Sandoval made two successful defenses before risking his title against Gaby Canizales on the undercard of Hagler-Mugabi in the outdoor stadium at Caesars Palace. In round seven, Sandoval, who had a hellish time making the weight, was knocked down three times and suffered a seizure as he collapsed from the third knockdown. Stretchered out of the ring, he was rushed to the hospital where doctors reduced the swelling in his brain and beat the odds to save his life. This would be Richie’s lone defeat. He finished his pro career with a record of 29-1 (17 KOs).

Bob Arum cushioned some of the pain by giving Richie a $25,000 bonus and offering him a lifetime job at Top Rank which Richie accepted. And let the record show that Arum was good to his word.

A more elaborate portrait of Richie Sandoval was published in these pages in 2017. You can check it out HERE. May he rest in peace.

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