One Punch Meant World of Difference to Pazienza, Rosenblatt

There are very few things on which Vinny Paz, who used to be known as Vinny Pazienza until he had his last name legally changed some years back

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Published

6 years ago

August 21, 2018

Bernard Fernandez

There are very few things on which Vinny Paz, who used to be known as Vinny Pazienza until he had his last name legally changed some years back, and Dana Rosenblatt are apt to agree. Perhaps the only common ground to which the polar-opposite former archrivals from New England are willing to admit is this: both of their lives irreversibly changed the night of Aug. 23, 1996, in Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall, with the landing of a single punch in the fourth round of the first of their two bouts.

That punch, a looping overhand right launched by a bleeding, vision-impaired Paz (as he will be referred to for the remainder of this look-back story), landed flush on Rosenblatt’s jaw, drastically altering a crossroads fight that Rosenblatt was winning easily to that point. Although Rosenblatt, the younger (24 years of age to Pazienza’s 33), seemingly hotter growth property, lurched to his feet and beat referee Tony Orlando’s count, he clearly was in deep distress and the instantly revitalized “Pazmanian Devil” swarmed in to release as much of the pent-up aggression his ominous nickname suggested. So intent on his finishing purpose was Paz that, when Orlando jumped in moments later to end the battering and protect the out-on-his-feet Rosenblatt, he also was floored by a wild shot flung by the underdog victor. For that bit of overexuberance, a semi-penitent Paz was socked with a 90-day suspension and $5,000 fine by the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board.

“I called Tony’s room later that night,” Paz, now 55, recalled when contacted for his remembrances of a fight that is inarguably one of his career highlights. “I said, `Tony, I want to tell you I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.’ He said, `Vinny, don’t worry about it. But can I get a rematch?’”

There would be a rematch, but not one pitting Paz against Orlando. Rosenblatt would get revenge of sorts on Paz when they squared off a second time, on Nov. 5, 1999, in Mashantucket, Conn., coming away with a disputed, 12-round split decision (it was disputed at least by Paz, who insists he was screwed by the judging) for the fringe IBO super middleweight title. But that didn’t – couldn’t – even the score for Rosenblatt for the punch that changed the arc of both fighters’ lives and careers 1,069 days earlier.

Now, about that jolting right that pumped new vitality into what had been Paz’s seemingly sagging fortunes while simultaneously sucking the momentum out of what had been Rosenblatt’s predicted ascendance to superstardom. Was it a purely lucky punch, as Rosenblatt contended then and still does, or the anticipated product of intense preparation, as Paz believes?

Depends on whom you ask.

“If you watch a tape of that fight and see him land that punch, he’s not looking at me at all,” said Rosenblatt, now 46. “His face is down. His eyes are closed. If that’s not a lucky punch, I don’t know what is.”

Paz, of course, begs to differ. “I had worked on that punch all through 10 weeks of training camp,” he said. “After the third round, I went back to the corner and told Rooney (trainer Kevin Rooney), `Kevin, I’m going to knock this f—— kid out.’ He said, `So go do it!’ I know you can do it, so go do it!’ And I did it. After I knocked him down and went to the neutral corner, I was thinking, `Please, please, Tony, let me go.’ I wanted to murder the guy. I wanted to take his head right off his shoulders.’”

So whose version of The Punch is the more accurate? Ron Borges, then the boxing writer for the Boston Globe, qualifies as an objective observer, having extensively covered both Pazienza, the wrong-side-of-the-tracks kid from Cranston, R.I., and Rosenblatt, the erudite southpaw from Malden, Mass., whose promoter, Top Rank founder and CEO Bob Arum, already had begun to hype as an updated version of such legendary Jewish fighters as Benny Leonard and Barney Ross. On this one question, however, Borges sides squarely with Paz.

“Vinny knew Dana would be open to being hit with that punch,” Borges recalled. “Those first three rounds, Dana was just beating the crap out of Vinny, who was already pretty busted up. After the third round, Dana, who was always this serious, self-contained guy, did something that was pretty uncharacteristic for him. He put one hand up and kind of dismissively twisted his glove around. I remember thinking, `He’s in trouble, because he actually thinks this fight is over.’ I knew that was the time when Vinny was most dangerous. In the very next round Vinny knocked his ass out with that overhand right.

“A few hours after the fight I was walking through the casino and ran into Dana’s dad, who was a very nice man. I told him, `I’m sorry for what happened to Dana, but I got to tell you something. I have no inside information, but I’m pretty sure that right now up in Dana’s room, his trainer, Joe Lake, is telling him he got hit with a lucky punch. But Mr. Rosenblatt, let me tell you something. Vinny spent a lot of time getting himself ready to throw that punch because he’s a professional. And that’s what your boy needs to know.”

Opinions will vary, of course. Perhaps the more pertinent consideration is not whether The Punch was the result of blind luck or meticulous planning, but all the circumstances that both preceded and followed it.

For Paz, the Rosenblatt bout, for the mostly insignificant and vacant WBU super middleweight title, had the earmarks of a last, possibly futile chance for redemption. He had not fought in 14 months, his most recent ring appearance having been an absolute beatdown at the hands of the luminously talented Roy Jones Jr. on June 24, 1995, also in Boardwalk Hall and, coincidentally, also with Tony Orlando as the referee. More than a few knowledgeable observers were ready to write off Paz, a former IBF super lightweight and WBA super welterweight champion, as past his prime and possibly as damaged goods. Remember, five years earlier Paz had been involved in a serious automobile accident that left him with two broken vertebrae in his spine and another that was dislocated. Doctors told him he would never box again, but, if his rehabilitation went well enough, he might someday be able to walk “with limited movement.” Fourteen months later, and after having had a metal device called a halo attached to his skull by screws, miracle man Paz resumed his career.

Contrast the foreboding sense of pessimism about Paz’s long-term prospects with the most optimistic projections for stylish southpaw Rosenblatt. In the September 1995 issue of The Ring, Arum predicted that the day would come, a few years down the road, when fight fans would want nothing so much as a matchup of Oscar De La Hoya, by then filled out to a robust 160 pounds and well on his way to his stated goal of world championships in six weight divisions, and Rosenblatt. The two had appeared on the same card at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas on May 6, 1995, with De La Hoya stopping Rafael Ruelas in two rounds of a lightweight unification showdown and Rosenblatt retaining his minor WBC Continental Americas middleweight title on a first-round knockout of Chad Parker.

“The dream fight for the biggest money of all time is Oscar and Rosenblatt,” Arum was quoted as saying. “That’s what I think of when I go to sleep at night.”

Arum’s master plan presumably still was on the drawing board with Paz penciled in as a big-name steppingstone for Rosenblatt in what was billed as “The Neighborhood War” for New England supremacy on the 3-to-1 favorite’s way to bigger and better things. But Paz had his own ideas of how matters would play out. To his way of thinking, it was he who had lured Rosenblatt into the trap he had set, not the other way around.

“I had watched him a couple of times before he fought me and I knew I was gonna knock the kid out,” Paz said. “I picked him out. He didn’t pick me. I picked an undefeated young kid because I wanted people to know that the way it went down with Jones wasn’t the end of my career.”

Not surprisingly, Paz – who’d be a charter inductee into the trash-talking hall of fame, were there such a thing – began a campaign of verbal disparagement that he insists wasn’t just to help sell the show. Nor was it just insulting words Paz hurled at Rosenblatt, but other forms of intended intimidation aimed at getting under the younger man’s skin like a progressively irritating rash.

“Vinny sent a dozen black roses to Rosenblatt’s mother before the fight,” Borges said. “That was pure Vinny. Then, on the night of the fight, Vinny stopped walking toward his dressing room and peeled off in a different direction. The security guard who was accompanying him said, `Hey, Vinny, that’s the wrong way.’ Vinny said, `Yeah, I know, I just got to do something first.’ Then he burst into Rosenblatt’s dressing room and told him, `Tonight’s going to be your worst f—— nightmare. I’m going to kick your f—— ass,’ at which point he got pushed out the door. But it was just a continuation of the mind games Vinny had been playing from the time the fight was announced.”

For his part, the polite Rosenblatt could not understand what he had done to incite Paz’s hatred of him. “I had no animosity toward him,” Rosenblatt said. “It was all on his end. His attitude was kind of like, `Yeah, I’m kind of a lowlife and this is my shtick. I’m going to make fun of this kid, then I’m going to beat him up.’ It was arrogance on his part, but I didn’t take it seriously.

“But before the second fight, maybe because I had beaten him up in the first one – up to the point he hit me with a punch I didn’t see, and praise to him for sticking around long enough to land that shot – it got even nastier on his end. A lot of the stuff he was saying was personal. I couldn’t believe some of the stupid s— he said.”

What Rosenblatt can’t dispute is the terrible toll The Punch took on him, in ways that likely would not have happened had he won as expected, very likely by stoppage had Paz’s badly swollen left eye and bleeding, busted nose worsened to the point where Orlando or the ring doctor would have had no choice but to call things off.

“My whole life would have been different,” Rosenblatt said of how his career, which went well for the most part but never reached the threshold of greatness, would now be regarded were it not for The Punch. “I’ll take boxing first. After Pazienza, I probably would have fought (Sugar Ray) Leonard, before Leonard fought (Hector) Camacho. Bob was promising Leonard. I would have made some money, maybe a million bucks, and, really, that wasn’t the Sugar Ray we all remember. Camacho proved that. I would have knocked out Leonard because he was done.

“After that, who knows? Now, all of a sudden, I’m a `name.’ Certainly my name would have resonated more than it does now. My life would be exponentially different, exponentially better.”

How so, he was asked.

“In my first fight after Pazienza (a 10-round unanimous decision over Glenwood Brown on Jan. 5, 1997, in Boston), I busted my (right) hand in the first round and I really mangled it by hitting him with it for nine more rounds. That was my power hand, since I’m naturally right-handed. Maybe I shouldn’t have kept going, but I knew if I lost twice in a row, I’d be done. But then I was out because of the hand injury for 15 months, and that really set me back.

“Why did I kind of fade away after the (first Paz) fight? It wasn’t just that I lost. It wasn’t the manner of how I lost. It was that I was off so long after I beat Glenwood Brown. Out of sight, out of mind, right? It was like I was yesterday’s news. And it wasn’t the same when I was able to fight again. I wasn’t with Bob anymore.

“I probably wouldn’t have fought Glenwood, where I busted my hand, were it not for that one punch from Pazienza. That was the beginning of the end for me, the start of a bunch of injuries to my hands and shoulders. That’s why I stopped fighting. But, hey, maybe I wouldn’t be doing mortgages now. So I don’t regret what happened then. Aw, that’s a lie. I do regret what happened.”

Rosenblatt retired from the ring after a three-round technical draw with Juan Carlos Viloria on June 28, 2002, a bout Rosenblatt almost certainly would have won were it not for the bad cut he sustained from what was ruled an unintentional head-butt. He finished with a 37-1-2 record with 23 victories inside the distance, but he never fought for a widely recognized world championship and the megafight with De La Hoya never became anything other than Arum’s temporary pipe dream.

But Rosenblatt hasn’t done badly in his post-boxing life. “I do residential mortgages,” he noted. “I was with a small bank up here, which is gone now, but I’m still in the business. I’ve been doing this since November 2001. I got in at a great time. Rates were going down, down, down, and I developed a lot of contacts.

“In my third month, I made $35,000. By the end of 10 months, I think I made about $1.5 million. I mean, do the math. I got, like, $15,000 for that final fight with Viloria. In 10 years after I stopped boxing and started doing mortgages, I made about $8 million and I invested it well.

“Over a five-year period I never made less than $800,000, and in my best year of 2005 I made $955,000. I was just killing it. But let me tell you, there were times when I would have given it all up to go back and finish my boxing career the right way.”

How good was Rosenblatt or, more to the point, how good might he have been? That, too, is a matter of conjecture. Teddy Atlas, who did color commentary for ESPN2’s telecast of Paz-Rosenblatt II, weighed in on the matter during his prefight analysis.

“He was never as good as his record before he got knocked out, and he never was as bad as they said after,” Atlas said. “He goes in and he’s fighting the right fight against Vinny (in their first matchup). He’s pot-shotting him when (Paz) rushed in and all of a sudden Rosenblatt gets caught with one of those looping punches, many of which missed before, and he’s out. After that night, the confidence left him like air from a punctured balloon. He’s a kid who never fully regained that confidence he once had in the ring. When he fights now, it’s like he’s waiting for something bad to happen.”

Paz, meanwhile, is still waiting for one more good thing to happen. He finished with a 50-10 record and 30 wins inside the distance, an accomplished enough career to get him inducted into the Atlantic City Boxing Hall of Fame on June 3 of this year and a life notable enough to have been the subject of a critically acclaimed 2016 movie, Bleed For This, with Miles Teller in the lead role. But there is a widespread belief that Paz bulked up through the use of performance-enhancing drugs, and even some of his more ardent admirers are hesitant to endorse him for induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame for that and other reasons.

“No doubt he was juicing,” said Borges. “His face took on the same sort of shape as Lyle Alzado’s. I’ve known Vinny since he was a skinny amateur. But, really, it’s partially the Duvas’ fault. He was much more of a boxer when he was an amateur and early into his pro career. He wasn’t looking to take two or three to land one. They kind of convinced him that if he was going to become popular and sell tickets, he had to be more than a boxer. He had to take people out. In that first fight against Rosenblatt it worked out. Other nights, not so much.

“And as far as the (IBHOF), I never say never because some of the guys who have gotten in there probably don’t deserve to be. I’m kind of a stickler. I think it should be a lot more exclusive than it is.”

Maybe more has been made of The Punch than needs to be, in terms of overall historical impact. But for two men so alike in some ways, so vastly different in others, the effects of it will forever stand as a touchstone for how a fleeting moment in time can have such a profound and lasting effect.

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Bernard Fernandez

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Remembering the Macho Man, Hector Camacho, a Great Sporting Character

Published

1 day ago

November 23, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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Twelve years ago tomorrow, on Nov. 24, 2012, Hector Camacho was officially declared dead. He was effectively dead before then, having suffered a heart attack in the hospital after his spinal cord had been severed by a bullet, but his attendants at the hospital in Bayamon, Puerto Rico, waited until his mother had arrived from New York to remove him from life support.

At the age of 50, one of the most charismatic personalities in the sporting life of America was silenced forever.

Hector “Macho” Camacho, the Macho Man, was flamboyant – boy was he ever – but he was also a great talent. A three-time New York City Golden Gloves champion, reputedly 96-4 as an amateur, he was undefeated in 31 bouts at 135 pounds and below and went on to conquer some of the sport’s biggest names – Boom Boom Mancini, Vinny Pazienza, Roberto Duran (twice), Sugar Ray Leonard – before the sun set on his long career.

Camacho was born in Bayamon but grew up in Spanish Harlem where his mother moved when he was four. He was 21 years old and 21-0 as a junior lightweight when he was first profiled in Sports Illustrated, then the best medium for enhancing the marketability of a young athlete. At this juncture in his life, Hector, who became a father at age 17, was still living in a Spanish Harlem housing project, sharing an apartment with his 38-year-old mother, his stepfather, three siblings, a niece and a nephew.

By then he had already been expelled from six schools and was no stranger to the legal system, having spent 3 ½ months at New York’s notorious Rikers Island for — as Pat Putnam phrased it — borrowing other people’s automobiles without their permission.

The story in S.I. noted that Camacho’s reflexes were so quick that he could play two video games at once. Among his many physical attributes, it was his hand speed that attracted the most attention. When he ramped up his offense, his fists were a blur. But eventually, when folks thought of Camacho, what they remembered was his choirboy face with the spit curl in the middle of his forehead and his outrageous ring costumes which ran the gamut from a loincloth to a dress.

Hot-dogging came natural to Hector Camacho; it was embedded in his DNA. And in common with Muhammad Ali, he could be arrogant without coming across as arrogant. There was an impish quality to his bravado. He was fun to be around and, in his own words, could light up a room like a Christmas tree.

What Camacho lacked was any capacity for embarrassment.

Former WBA super bantamweight champion Clarence “Bones” Adams, who is now the proprietor of a Las Vegas gym that bears his name, became fast friends with the Macho Man when both trained in Las Vegas, the host city for their most lucrative fights. Mention Camacho’s name to Adams and a smile creases his face if he doesn’t burst out laughing.

“One day after Hector and I had gone jogging,” recollects Adams, “we drove over to the old White Cross Drugs [on the north Strip near the Stratosphere] to grab a bite to eat at their lunch counter. When we left and were standing outside by the car, Hector said, ‘Hold on a minute, I have to go pee.’ I said I’ll wait for you but then I noticed he was already peeing. Some cars honked as they passed by.

“Greg Hannely, my manager at the time, and I went to Detroit in 2000 to support Hector who was on the undercard of a show featuring Thomas Hearns. At the weigh-in, Hector wore a long shirt with nothing underneath it. This wasn’t apparent until he stepped off the scale and started doing jumping jacks.

“Hector,” continues Adams, “once had a Ferrari that he misplaced; he couldn’t remember where he parked it. He never did recover that car, but he wasn’t too bothered by it. His attitude was, ‘there’s always more where it came from.’” (Presumably this was the same Ferrari that Camacho was driving when he was ticketed for driving too slow with a suspended license on a Florida highway while being pleasured by a woman sitting astride him.)

Historians would compartmentalize Camacho’s career into two segments. Part One ended with his successful lightweight title defense against Edwin Rosario at Madison Square Garden on June 13, 1986.

Camacho kept his undefeated record intact, prevailing on a split decision, but ended the fight looking as if he had taken all the worst of it. Badly hurt in the fifth round and again in the 11^th, he repaired to his dressing room with a swollen nose and two black eyes.

This fight, reads a story in a Canadian paper, “persuaded him to scale back his ultra-aggressive style in favor of a more cerebral, defensive approach.” That’s a diplomatic way of saying that Camacho devolved into a runner.

In his next fight, Camacho proved too clever for Cornelius Boza-Edwards, winning a unanimous decision, but the crowd didn’t like it when Hector spent the last two rounds on his bicycle and there were boos aplenty as the match wended to its conclusion. This would be the Macho Man’s final fight as a lightweight. He moved up to 140 where a slew of attractive match-ups awaited, notably a showdown with Julio Cesar Chavez.

Camacho and Chavez touched gloves in Las Vegas on Sept. 13, 1992, before an announced crowd of 19,100 at the UNLV basketball arena in what reportedly was the fastest sellout in Las Vegas boxing history up to that date. Chavez, widely seen as the top pound-for-pound fighter in the sport, advanced his record to 82-0 with a lopsided decision, winning all 12 rounds on the card of one of the judges. The Macho Man, who had avenged his lone defeat to Greg Haugen, declined to 41-2.

This wasn’t a milquetoast performance by Camacho. He simply couldn’t deal with Chavez’s unrelenting pressure. LA Times scribe Alan Malamud wrote that Hector showed unexpected grit by trading with Chavez after his legs were gone, thereby reducing him to a stationary target. But more brickbats came Camacho’s way following setbacks to Felix Trinidad and Oscar De La Hoya. He lasted the distance in both bouts but was roundly out-pointed. By the third round of the De La Hoya fight, wrote Kevin Iole, it was a foregone conclusion that De La Hoya would win.

Between the Trinidad and De La Hoya fights, staged 44 months apart, Camacho had 21 fights and won them all. His victims were mostly journeyman with two notable exceptions. On June 22, 1996, he scored a 12-round unanimous decision over 45-year-old Roberto Duran. Eight months later, he defeated another faded legend when he stopped Sugar Ray Leonard in the fifth round. Leonard, who had been out of the ring for six years, was forever retiring and unretiring and Camacho retired him for good. Both bouts were in Atlantic City.

A wag wrote that Sugar Ray was 40 years old going on 41 and that Camacho was 35 years old going on puberty.

Camacho’s advisors kept him busy to keep his name in the news and Hector did his part by making the news for bad behavior outside the ring. In January of 2005, he was arrested for the November 2004 burglary of a computer store in Gulfport, Mississippi. He went there to retrieve a laptop that was being repaired but entered the property after hours by way of the ceiling. An illegal drug, ecstasy, was found in his hotel room when he was placed under arrest.

After serving five months in jail, Camacho was released with the understanding that he would be placed under house arrest for one year when he returned to Puerto Rico but, by all accounts, the authorities in Puerto Rico were never notified of this arrangement.

Camacho’s frequent misdeeds, once seen as the amusing antics of a fun-loving man-child, came to be seen in a different light as he grew older; as a pattern of behavior that betrayed a dark side in his personality.

In a 1985 conversation with New York Times boxing writer Michael Katz, Camacho’s estranged manager Billy Giles said, “someday he’ll wind up like Tyrone Everett, maybe worse,” the reference to a talented junior lightweight from Philadelphia who was murdered under sordid circumstances.

That proved to be eerily prophetic.

Camacho had 20 more fights after his hollow performance against Oscar De La Hoya, ending his career as a bloated middleweight. His only noteworthy opponent during this final phase of his boxing career was Duran who was then 50 years old when they clashed in Denver. In a bout that echoed their first meeting, Hector won a unanimous decision. This was Roberto Duran’s farewell fight. Camacho soldiered on for eight more bouts, winning five.

In November of 2012, thirty months after his last ring assignment, Hector Camacho and a companion were ambushed as they sat in a car in the darkened parking lot of a Bayamon, Puerto Rico bar. The companion died instantly in the hail of bullets. Police found nine packets of cocaine on the decedent and an open packet of cocaine in the car.

Camacho’’s funeral was held at Harlem’s landmark Saint Cecilia’s Church. Hundreds of mourners stood in the cold outside the church as his casket was being placed in the funeral car. They cheered and shouted Camacho’s battle cry, “Macho Time,” as the hearse pulled away.

They say you shouldn’t speak bad about the dead, so we will let Bones Adams have the last word. “Hector had his demons,” says Adams, “but he was a great friend, a nice, kind, and caring guy.”

—

Editor’s note: For more on Hector Camacho, check out Christian Giudice’s biography, “Macho Time: The Meteoric Rise and Tragic Fall of Hector Camacho,” published by Hamilcar in 2020.

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 304: A Year of Transformation in Boxing and More

Published

2 days ago

November 22, 2024

David A. Avila

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A subtle transformation in professional boxing is taking place with the biggest fights no longer placed in Las Vegas, New York or Los Angeles. Instead, they are heading to the Middle East.

Golden Boy Promotions joined the crowd last week with one of their stronger fight cards taking place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The main attractions were new unified cruiserweight champion Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez of Mexico along with Puerto Rico’s diminutive Oscar Collazo unifying the minimumweight division.

And there is more to come.

Matchroom Boxing seemed to lead the way in this rerouting of major boxing events. It goes as far back as December 2019 when Anthony Joshua fought Andy Ruiz in a rematch for the heavyweight championship in Diriyah, Saudi Arabia.

Little by little major fights are being rerouted to Saudi Arabia.

Is it a good thing or not?

For promoters looking to cut costs it’s definitely welcomed. But what does it do for the fan base accustomed to saving their money to buy tickets for one or two major events?

Now there is talk of Shakur Stevenson, Devin Haney and Terence Crawford heading to the Middle East to fight on major cards sponsored by “Riyad Spring.” It’s a new avenue for the sport of pro boxing.

This past week Golden Boy and its roster of Latino fighters took its turn and showed off their brand of aggressive fights. Some like Collazo and Arnold Barboza made the best of their moments. And, of course, Zurdo proved he should have moved up in weight years ago. He could be the Comeback Fighter of the Year.

Benavidez vs Morrell

Interim light heavyweight champion David Benavidez accepted a challenge from WBA light heavyweight titlist David Morrell to meet on Feb. 1 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

Bad blood between the two tall fighters already exists.

Morrell claims Benavidez is over-rated.

“I’m getting the knockout. 100%. He’s all talk and no bite. He can’t do what he thinks he’s gonna do,” said Morrell. “He has no idea what he’s talking about, but he’s provoking me and now I want to go out there and beat the crap out of him. I’m here now and none of that talk matters.”

Benavidez begs to differ.

“Here we are again. I told you that I was going to give you the fights you want to see, and now we’re here,” Benavidez said while in Los Angeles. “Morrell has been talking about me for a while and disrespecting me. He wanted to make it personal with me, so I’m personally going to break his mouth. That’ll give him something to remember me by.”

Also scheduled to fight on the fight card are Isaac Cruz, Stephen Fulton, Brandon Figueroa and Jesus Ramos Jr.

Netflix

No surprise for me with the massive success of the Jake Paul and Mike Tyson event on the Most Valuable Promotions boxing card last week.

According to Netflix there were 108 million people tuned into the event last Friday that also featured the incredible Amanda Serrano and Katie Taylor rematch. Another exciting card was the men’s welterweight clash between Mario Barrios and Abel Ramos that ended in a draw.

If fans weren’t satisfied with the Paul fight, they certainly got their fulfillment with the world title fights, especially Serrano and Taylor who were estimated to be viewed by more than 72 million people. No female fight in history can touch those numbers.

So, what’s next for Netflix in terms of boxing?

West Coast Blues

Southern California is usually a hotbed for boxing events no matter what time of the year. But this year only a few boxing cards are taking place within a driving distance until the end of the year.

Las Vegas is in slumber and Southern California has a few smaller boxing cards still on schedule. Arizona has a significant Top Rank fight card in a few weeks as does Golden Boy Promotions in the Inland Empire.

Here are some upcoming fight events worth noting:

Dec. 5 – at OC Hangar in Costa Mesa, Calif. Vlad Panin vs Sal Briceno by SOCA Fights.

Dec. 7 – at Footprint Center in Phoenix, Rafael Espinoza vs Robeisy Ramirez and Oscar Valdez vs Emanuel Navarrete by Top Rank.

Dec. 13, at Chumash Casino 360 in Santa Ynez, Calif. Carlos Balderas vs Cesar Villarraga by 360 Promotions.

Dec. 14 at Toyota Arena in Ontario, Calif. Alexis Rocha vs Raul Curiel by Golden Boy Promotions.

Turkeys in East L.A.

The 25^th annual Turkey Giveaway by Golden Boy takes place on Saturday Nov. 23, at Oscar De La Hoya Animo High School starting at 11 a.m.

It’s incredible that 25 years have passed since the inception of this yearly event. Many current and past fighters for the promotion company will be passing out turkeys and meeting fans. Among those expected to appear are Alexis Rocha, Victor Morales, Joel Iriarte, Bryan Lua and others.

Photo: Eddie Hearn, Frank Warren, and HE Turki Alalshikh at the Joshua-Dubois fight

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Philly’s Jesse Hart Continues His Quest plus Thoughts on Tyson-Paul and ‘Boots’ Ennis

Published

3 days ago

November 21, 2024

Luis A. Cortes III

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Jesse Hart (31-3, 25 KOs) returns to the ring tomorrow night (Friday, Nov. 22) on a Teflon Promotions card at the Liacouras Center on the campus of Temple University. During a recent media workout for the show, which will feature five other local fighters in separate bouts, Hart was adamant that fighting for the second time this year at home will only help in his continuing quest to push towards a second chance at a world championship. “Fighting at home is always great and it just makes sense from a business standpoint since I already have a name in the sport and in the city,” said Hart (pictured on the left).

Hart’s view of where his career currently resides in relation to the landscape in the light heavyweight division leads you to believe that, at the age of 35, Hart is realistic about how far he can go before his career is over.

“Make good fights, win those fights, fight as much as I can and stay busy, that’s the way the light heavyweight division won’t be able to ignore me,” he says. Aside from two losses back in 2017 and 2018 to current unified cruiserweight champion Gilberto Ramirez at super middleweight, Hart’s only other defeat was to Joe Smith during Smith’s most successful portion of his career.

When attempts to make fights with (at the time) up-and-coming prospects like Edgar Berlanga and David Benavidez were denied with Hart being viewed as the typical high risk-low reward opponent, it was time to find another way. So, Hart decided to stay local after splitting with Top Rank Promotions post-surgery to repair his longtime right-hand issues and hooked up with Teflon Promotions, an upstart company that is the latest to take on the noble endeavor of trying to return North Broad Street and Atlantic City to boxing prominence.

In essence, it is a calculated move that is potentially a win-win situation for all parties. Continued success for Hart along with some of the titles at light heavyweight eventually being released from Artur Beterbiev’s grasp due to outside politics, and Jesse Hart just may lift up Teflon Promotions into a major player on the regional scene.

Tickets for Friday’s show are available on Ticketmaster platforms.

As we entered November, a glance at the boxing schedule made me wonder if it was possible for the sport to have a memorable month — one that could shine a light forward in boxing’s ongoing quest to regain relevance in today’s sports landscape. Having consecutive weekends with events that could spark interest in the pugilistic artform and its wonderful characters was what I was hoping for, but what we got instead was more evidence that boxing isn’t immune to modern business practices landing a one-two punch on the action both inside and outside of the ring.

Jaron “Boots” Ennis was expected to make a statement in his rematch with Karen Chukhadzian on Nov. 9, a statement to put the elite level champions around his weight class on notice. What we witnessed, however, was more evidence of how current champions in their prime can be hampered by having to navigate a business that functions through the cooperation of independent contractors. Ennis got the job done – he won – but it was a lackluster performance.

It’s time for Ennis to fight the fighters we already thought we would have seen him fight by now and I do believe there is some truth to Ennis rising to the occasion if there was a more noteworthy name across the ring.

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Some positives emerged from the Mike Tyson-Jake Paul event the following week. Amanda Serrano, Katie Taylor, and women’s boxing are finally getting the public recognition they deserve. Mario Barrios’s draw against the tough Abel Ramos, also on the Netflix broadcast, was an action-packed firefight. So, mainstream America and beyond got to witness actual fights before being subjected to Paul’s latest circus.

Unfortunately for fans, but fortunately for Paul, the lone true boxing star in the main event dimmed out from an athletic standpoint decades ago. In this instance modern business practices allowed for a social media influencer to stage his largest money grab from a completely unnuanced public.

As Paul rose to the ring apron from the steps and looked around “Jerry’s World,” taking in the moment, it reminded me of an actual fighter when they’re about to enter the ring taking in the atmosphere before they risk their lives after a lifetime of dedication to try and realize a childhood dream. In this case though, this was a natural-born hustler realizing as he made it to the ring apron that his hustle was likely having its moment of glory.

In boxing circles, Jake Paul is viewed as a “necessary evil.” What occurs in his fights are merely an afterthought to the spectacle that is at the core of the social media realm that birthed him. Hopefully the public learned from the atrocity that occurred once the exhibition started that smoke and mirrors last for only so long. Hopefully Paul’s moment of being a boxing performer and acting like a true fighter comes to its conclusion. But he isn’t going away anytime soon, especially since his promotional company is now in bed with Netflix.

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