No Longer Blue, But Philly Club Show Scene Still Rocks

The venerable Blue Horizon is still shuttered and apparently is destined to stay that way, but audiences for the club-show fight scene in Philadelphia clearly have found other places to sate their obsession.

One night after a sellout crowd of around 1,100 filled the room used for boxing events at the Sugar House Casino, Hard Hitting Promotions staged an eight-fight card at the 2300 Arena in South Philly that was headlined by Derrick Webster’s eighth-round stoppage of Les Sherrington for something called the NBA (that’s National Boxing Association) Intercontinental super middleweight championship, sending a full house of 1,100 or so similarly satisfied fight fans home happy.

If there is a difference between the two venues, it’s that the Sugar House, whose Friday card was staged by Marshall Kauffman’s Kings Promotions, has a fair number of luxurious touches and is located on the Delaware River waterfront, where all manner of nightclubs and other nocturnal lures are available on- and off-site to patrons after the final punch is thrown. The 2300 Arena, which has undergone several name changes, is in a grittier part of town and has more of a Blue Horizon feel, the strategically placed huge-screen TVs and nifty runway entrance from the dressing rooms to the ring notwithstanding. For fans weaned on the Blue, trips to the 2300 Arena probably feel like going home. HHP CEO Manny Rivera worked the room like a politician, thanking everyone for coming and vowing more good times to be had for those who choose to return.

Despite some early glitches – a fight which was to involve longtime local attraction Eric Hunter was canceled and the opening bout delayed more than an hour because the ambulance required to be on hand was reportedly “stuck in traffic,” causing one ringside wag to comment that it must have been coming in from West Virginia — those who stayed for the entirety of the nearly four-hour card didn’t seem to mind. The four Hard Hitting Promotions house fighters, all won inside the distance and to the lusty cheers of their cliques of supporters, with lightweight Jeremy Cuevas’ sixth-round TKO of a determined Deo Kizito, in a scheduled six-rounder, emerging as the action fight of the night.

Philly guy Cuevas (10-0, 8 KOs) seemed destined to have an easy night of it when he wobbled Kizito (3-4, 2 KOs), of Washington, D.C., in the first round. He was on the verge of closing the deal in the fourth round when he drove a retreating Kizito across the ring with a volley of punches, with referee Steve Smoger poised to wave things off if another big shot landed. But Kizito, his back to the ropes, launched an improbable counter-attack to buy himself some more time to turn the tide.

Things got a bit crazier in the fifth, when Kizito went down and Cuevas, thinking the fight was over and he had won by a knockout, mounted the ropes in a neutral corner and raised his arms in exultation. But Smoger ruled that Kizito’s flooring was the result of a slip, and he signaled the fighters back together.

Although Cuevas was far enough ahead in the final round to win on points, he took umbrage to a pair of discomforting low blows that caused Smoger to give him a few seconds of recovery time. Cuevas then went after Kizito with furious purpose and when the D.C. fighter was legitimately floored, Smoger ended matters after an elapsed time of 2 minutes and 2 seconds.

“I felt he disrespected me,” Cuevas said of Kizito’s two possibly intentional shots to his private parts. “Two in a row? That’s disrespectful. But I got to say, the guy was tough, a lot tougher than I thought. He took some hard shots.”

The pace was more leisurely in the scheduled 10-round main event, which pitted 36-year-old southpaw Webster (27-1, 14 KOs), from Glassboro, N.J., against Les Sherrington (37-11, 21 KOs). Despite Webster’s impressive-looking record, it was largely compiled against non-descript opposition, a category into which Sherrington – a native of Queensland, Australia, who also is 36 and would have gotten the door prize for having come the longest way to be on hand, had such a thing existed – probably falls. Through seven rounds, Webster employed a stick-and-move strategy that was mostly move and not much stick. But in round eight Webster, who bears a facial resemblance to IBF welterweight champ Errol Spence Jr., unleashed his inner Spence and battered Sherrington the canvas, obliging referee Gary Rosato to wave things off at the 1:32 mark.

“I knew I was pitching a shutout, but my right shoulder started hurting so I figured, why not get him out there?” reasoned Webster, who said he has become accustomed to hearing he looks like Spence, also a southpaw and widely regarded as one of the top four or five pound-for-pound fighters in the world.

“A lot of people tell me that,” he said of his resemblance to Spence. “My body work needs to be better to get as good as his, though.”

The delayed opening bout might have marked the final ring appearance of Camden, N.J., veteran Prince Badi Ajamu (29-5-1, 15 KOs), who dropped a four-round unanimous decision to Puerto Rico’s Kenny Cruz (2-2-1, 2 KOs). Ajamu is 46, at 197 pounds a fleshy cruiserweight well above his optimal fighting weight of 175, and he is now 2-2 on a comeback launched in 2017 after having been inactive for eight years.

“I’m going back down to light heavy,” Ajamu, who once fought Roy Jones Jr., said of his immediate plans. “I need to keep fighting, stay consistent and be honest with myself. If I can’t be competitive and get in good condition, it might be time to do something else.”

In addition to Cuevas, Hard Hitting Promotions showcased Branden Pizarro, Samuel Teah and Gadwin Rosa also took their bouts out of the hands of the judges. Pizarro (11-1, 5 KOs), a lightweight, registered two knockdowns in stopping Hector Marengo (7-13-4, 4 KOs) in two rounds; lightweight Samuel Teah (14-2-1, 7 KOs) got Zack Ramsey (8-4, 4 KOs) out of there in one, and super featherweight Gadwin Rosa (7-0, 6 KOs) had to wait until the fifth round before stopping Angel Albelo (4-10-3, 1 KO) in a scheduled six-rounder.

Photo credit: Darryl Cobb

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