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Deontay Wilder is a One-Man Rolling Tide in His Own Right

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Deontay Wilder

As a first-semester freshman at Shelton Community College in his hometown of Tuscaloosa, Ala., Deontay Wilder had the same dream that many boys and young men in that state have harbored almost since birth. Tall, lean and athletically gifted, he would earn an associate degree at Shelton CC, then walk on at the University of Alabama where he could imagine himself starring for his beloved Crimson Tide as a wide receiver on the football team or a forward on the basketball squad. Maybe, he dared to believe, he could play and excel in both sports en route to being awarded the college degree his mother fervently hoped would be her son’s ticket to a better life.

But destiny had other plans for Wilder. His infant daughter, Naieya, was diagnosed with spina bifida, a congenital condition that affects the spine and usually is apparent at birth. Raised to believe that a real man is responsible for taking care of his children, Wilder dropped out of Shelton and took jobs that paid actual money, if not a whole lot of it, rather than hope to be drafted by the NFL or NBA, a long shot dependent, of course, on his even making one of Alabama’s varsity rosters and doing well enough to draw pro scouts’ attention.

It has been a meandering road for Wilder from former community college student to IHOP waiter to Red Lobster kitchen worker to Olympic bronze medalist in boxing and, since his unanimous decision over Bermane Stiverne on Jan. 16, 2015, WBC heavyweight champion. The kid who once fantasized about catching touchdown passes and sinking jump shots in the cauldron of Southeastern Conference competition is now 33 years old, a multimillionaire and emerging state treasure famous enough to have been asked by Alabama football coach Nick Saban, who has led the powerhouse Tide to five national titles in the last 11 years and is bearing down on a sixth this season with a top-rated, undefeated team, to occasionally deliver motivational speeches to the red-clad players to whose ranks Wilder once hoped to join.

It wouldn’t be all that surprising if Saban again brought Wilder (40-0, 39 KOs) — who makes the eighth defense of his WBC title Saturday night against former champ Tyson Fury (27-0, 19 KOs) at the Staples Center in Los Angeles — to give another rah-rah pep talk to the Crimson Tide if they make it to the national championship game on Jan. 7 in Santa Clara, Calif. After all, Wilder has shone on a stage that stretches beyond the boundaries of his state or even his country. It has been said that the heavyweight champion of the world holds the most prestigious title any athlete can have, although the proliferation of sanctioning bodies and multiple claimants to that distinction have diluted its historical importance. But a victory over former lineal champ Fury, and especially if it comes in the form of another exclamation-point knockout, would do much to bolster Wilder’s contention that he truly is the best of the best, the “baddest man on the planet,” and worthy of being mentioned in the same breath with some of the greatest champions and hardest punchers ever to have graced the division.

“Alabama is the national champion,” noted Jay Deas, Wilder’s co-trainer and the man who introduced him to all the possibilities that a foray into boxing might offer someone with his signature skill. “Deontay is a world champion.”

And not just some itinerant holder of an alphabet title whose place in boxing history is written in pencil and not indelible ink. To Wilder’s way of thinking, it is the awesome power he brings to his work – primarily packed in an overhand right that can instantly turn an opponent into a twitching heap of humanity  – that stamps him as a special fighter, worthy of taking his eventual place in the pantheon of such big-man blasters as Mike Tyson, Sonny Liston, Joe Louis, George Foreman, Rocky Marciano, Earnie Shavers, Jack Dempsey, Joe Frazier and Lennox Lewis. Put it this way: Wilder has no intention of letting the outcome of his high-visibility pairing with Fury rest in the hands of the judges.

“I say I’m the best. I say I hit the hardest. I say I’m the baddest man on the planet, and I believe every word that I say,” the confident-to-the-point-of-cockiness Wilder said of the great equalizer he possesses and will neutralize anything Fury might have going for him because, well, when hasn’t it? “I’m all about devastating knockouts. That’s what I do.  (Fury) knows he’s going to get knocked out. So he can whoop and he can holler, he can build himself up. But he’d better meditate on this situation because he’s going to feel pain that he never felt before.”

High-volume knockout heavyweights come in all shapes and sizes, and the power source from which they draw is not always readily evident to the untrained eye. Some fighters have ripped physiques that look more appropriate for contestants in a Mr. Universe contest, but they don’t hit especially hard, the impressively muscled Shavers being a notable exception. Foreman and Liston had thicker bodies and huge fists capable of almost casually dispensing blunt-force trauma. Tyson, Frazier and Marciano were stumpy, short-armed guys who could knock a brick building down with a single shot. And Wilder? Well, he’s 6-foot-7, with a stretched-out weight distribution that suggests an Olympic swimming champion more than a fighter capable of knocking larger men silly. To some – like, for instance, Fury, who at 6-foot-9 and 260 or so pounds is anything but lean – the WBC champ looks almost gaunt.

“How am I going to let this little, skinny spaghetti hoot beat me?” Fury asked, rhetorically.

Wilder doesn’t necessarily dispute the notion that he is pretty much a lightweight for a heavyweight in an era where more and more of the sport’s big boys are beginning to resemble the Alabama defensive ends that he could never have been unless he wolfed down maybe six or seven carb-loaded meals a day. A bronze medalist at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, hence his nickname of the “Bronze Bomber,” the closest physical approximation to Wilder might be the welterweight version of Thomas “Hit Man” Hearns, who also had a spindly build but a sledgehammer of a right hand.

“I don’t care how big he is,” Wilder said of the taller (by two inches), much heftier Fury. “I done fought big fighters. Everybody I’ve fought has outweighed me. (Actually, it’s only 35 of 40.) But when you possess my kind of power, you don’t worry about a lot of things, man. I got the killer instinct. I got the most feared, the most dangerous killer instinct in the boxing game. It’s natural. It’s born.”

It is axiomatic that big hitters are born, not made, which might not be entirely accurate when you consider that the very young Tommy Hearns, who found his way into the late, great Emanuel Steward’s Kronk Gym in Detroit, didn’t have much pop until he learned some of the finer points of power punching, like hip rotation and turning your fist over at the moment of impact. But Wilder was basically a grown man of 20 when he checked out Deas’ gym in Tuscaloosa and learned, as Deas soon did, that the tall, skinny guy had a gift that might translate into something of value greater than a weekly $400 check from Red Lobster.

After taking a bronze in Beijing as a relative neophyte (he had an OK but hardly extraordinary 30-5 amateur record), the still-learning Wilder turned pro at 23 with a second-round knockout of Ethan Cox on Nov. 15, 2008, in Nashville, Tenn. Wilder weighed a career-low 207¼ pounds for his debut and, in what would become something of an oddity, actually outweighed Cox by 6½ pounds. Over the course of his 10-year pro career, Wilder – who has come in for three fights at a career-high of 229 pounds – has averaged 220.2 pounds per bout to 242.9 for the guys he’s been blasting out, although that gap might not be quite so wide were it not for the two chubbos who made the scales groan at 398 and 352½, respectively, that a still-rough-around-the-edges Wilder got out of there in the first round.

Only one opponent – then-WBC champ Stiverne, whom Wilder dethroned – has gone the distance with the “Bronze Bomber,” but Stiverne was decked three times in losing a one-round quickie on Nov. 4, 2017, meaning that the heavyweight champion with the highest career knockout percentage has kayoed every man he has been paired with as a pro. True, Wilder’s victims haven’t all been top-shelf, but that hasn’t been for a lack of trying. Fury’s scoffing putdown that 35 of Wilder’s 40 victories have come against “total tomato cans who can’t fight back” notwithstanding, Deas correctly points out that Wilder was poised to go to Moscow to fight the very formidable Russian Alexander Povetkin, a bout that went by the wayside when Povetkin tested positive for a banned substance, and he was insistent on proceeding with a twice-postponed matchup with the even more formidable Cuban southpaw Luis Ortiz after Ortiz twice tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs. Wilder, who was in trouble himself in the seventh round, won that slugfest on a 10th-round KO on March 3.

“Deontay and Tyson Fury both let their representatives know this was the fight they wanted, this was the fight the public wanted,” Deas said in holding the bout up as proof that his guy was willing to fight anyone, at any time and any place. “It’s a huge fight between undefeated fighters. Both guys should be commended for stepping up and giving the fans a fight they really want to see.

“But that’s Deontay Wilder. He will be involved in the two biggest heavyweight fights of 2018, having fought Ortiz and Fury. Nobody can match that resume. Joshua fighting (Joseph) Parker and Povetkin just doesn’t stack up. And if – when – Deontay beats Fury, I think he deserves to be recognized as Fighter of the Year.”

It is reasonable to believe Wilder will be one of two finalists for all the Fighter of the Year awards on the strength of wins over Ortiz and Fury, if he survives the upcoming test, arguably the biggest challenge of his career to date. His primary rival as the top fighter of 2018 would be undisputed cruiserweight ruler Oleksandr Usyk, who also has had a very commendable year with victories over quality opponents Mairis Breidis, Murat Gassiev and Tony Bellew.

But, as the recent mid-term U.S. elections should have demonstrated, the only sure thing in boxing, as in politics, is that there are no sure things. It’s wonderful to have confidence in yourself, but Wilder’s pronouncements of virtual invincibility call to mind Mike Tyson’s mistaken belief that he, too, was too good to ever lose to anyone inside a roped-off swatch of canvas. That idea went by the boards, of course, when Tyson was felled by 42-1 longshot Buster Douglas in Tokyo.

Reminded that Fury has always had a difficult style to decipher, Fury said with a vintage Mike Tyson-level of imperiousness, “I will figure him out. I don’t know when it’s coming, but when it does come, it’s good night, baby. I’m a true champion. A true champion knows how to adjust to anybody, any style. Fury has a lot of great attributes, but I’m the best in the world. And I’m going to prove it again. My confidence is over the roof.”

Whoever survives Saturday night’s fight likely moves on to a clear-the-decks showdown with WBA/WBO/IBF heavyweight champ Antony Joshua in 2019. But that won’t just be a fight to determine the best heavyweight of the here and now; to the winner likely goes the opportunity to sit at a table reserved only for the bluest-blooded members of heavyweight royalty. It’s a highly exclusive club, and Wilder is impatient to receive his invitation.

“I’ve worked my ass off to get to this very point in my life,” he said. “And now I’m here.”

Bernard Fernandez is the retired boxing writer for the Philadelphia Daily News. He is a five-term former president of the Boxing Writers Association of America, an inductee into the Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Atlantic City Boxing Halls of Fame and the recipient of the Nat Fleischer Award for Excellence in Boxing Journalism and the Barney Nagler Award for Long and Meritorious Service to Boxing.

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Spared Prison by a Lenient Judge, Chordale Booker Pursues a World Boxing Title

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Spared Prison by a Lenient Judge, Chordale Booker Pursues a World Boxing Title

“I always wanted to be great. Not great like Muhammad Ali; just great in my community. If little kids followed behind me every time I went out running, that would be the summit.”

The speaker is Chordale Booker and when he talks about his community, one gets the sense that he is talking about the entire city of Stamford, Connecticut, the city that hued him.

Chordale (pronounced Cor-dell) dreams about returning to Stamford next week laureled as a world boxing champion. Standing in his way is Sebastian Fundora who holds the WBC and WBO belts in the 154-pound weight class. Booker, 33, and Fundora, 27, will lock horns Saturday night at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas in the main event of a PBC show that will air on Amazon Prime Video.

Historically, boxing and poverty have gone hand-in-hand. Chordale Booker spent his formative years on the west side of Stamford, home to one of America’s most notorious public housing projects. Like many of his peers, he seemed destined to spend a portion of his adult life in prison.

Booker, by his own admission, was selling weed when still in middle school and picking up some extra pocket change while serving as a lookout for dealers higher-up in the food chain. He was in his late teens when police intercepted a potential gang fight and found drugs and a handgun in his car. “Some of the drugs were mine,” Booker acknowledges, “but not all of them. I was the only one arrested, but I couldn’t snitch on my friends.”

He could have been sent to prison for 13 years if District Superior Court judge Gary White adhered to mandatory sentencing guidelines, but White was lenient and let him off with three-years’ probation.

Given a reprieve, as it were, Booker reassessed his life and decided to dedicate himself to the sport of boxing and to healing some of the divisions in his community. The nickname that he wears on his boxing shorts, “The Gift,” honors Judge White’s benevolence.

Booker was living with an aunt and uncle in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn during the bulk of his amateur career. A frequent sparring partner who became one of his best friends was Patrick Day. Chordale spent many hours at the PAL gym in Freeport, Long Island, where Day trained under the tutelage of his Freeport neighbor Joe Higgins, a retired Brooklyn firefighter.

On Oct. 16, 2019, Patrick Day died at Chicago’s Northwestern Memorial Hospital from a traumatic brain injury four days after being knocked out by former U.S. Olympian Charles Conwell.

Conwell, overcome with grief, nearly quit boxing, but was encouraged to keep fighting and soldiered on. Undefeated (21-0) as a pro, he’s ranked #3 by the WBC and #2 by the WBO at 154 which puts him near the top of the queue in the race to fight the winner of Fundora-Booker.

At the elite level, amateur boxing is a small world. Chordale Booker lost two decisions to Charles Conwell in 2015, the second a razor-thin decision in late December at the Olympic Trials in Reno. But as to meeting up with Conwell again down the road, Booker is understandably conflicted. “I would love to win back that loss to him in the Trials, but emotionally it would be tough because I can’t think about him without also thinking of Patrick. Of course, this is nothing personal.”

Chordale Booker is the subject of a prize-winning 16-minute documentary by Craig Cutler that was released in 2016 shortly after the boxer turned pro. In the film, which can be found online, Chordale talks about how boxing and the sacrifices it commands gave purpose to his life. He also waxes poetically on boxing as an art form: “The magnificent boxers are the ones that see the art. They know how to move and flow with the rhythm of a fight. When I am fighting, my goal is to disrupt [my opponent’s] rhythm. It sounds simple, but it takes hours of practice to perfect that.”

Booker won his first 17 pro fights preceding his date with Austin “Ammo” Williams on the undercard of the historic first fight between Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano at Madison Square Garden. “I don’t want to make excuses, but he caught me at the right time in my career. I had a lot of issues in my life and I couldn’t turn down the money.”

That was a humbling experience made more demoralizing by the venue. As an amateur, Chordale thirsted to fight at Madison Square Garden but never did get to fight at the storied sock palace despite winning a slew of local tourneys – a highlight was winning the Sugar Ray Robinson Trophy as the best open division boxer at the 2015 Golden Gloves tournament – but by then the sponsor of the longstanding annual event, the New York Daily News, had shifted the tourney from the Garden to Barclays Center.

Booker has won six fights since that mishap at MSG, five on cards with modest purses in his home state at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, elevating his record to 23-1 (11 KOs).

Sebastian Fundora, one-half of the first brother-sister combination to hold world titles simultaneously, is a puzzle for any opponent. At six-foot-six, he is the tallest title-holder ever in his weight class. Per boxrec, he will have a nine-inch height and 10-inch reach advantage. It’s a pairing that would lead an old-time scribe to dust off the adjective “Mutt-and-Jeff.”

In the online marketplace, the odds favoring Fundora (21-1-1, 15 KOs) are as high as 14/1. While one can see the logic, it’s a physical mismatch, one can reasonably question whether the “Towering Inferno” should be a 14/1 favorite over anyone. He’s led a rather charmed life since getting bombed out in the seventh round by Brian Mendoza in a fight that he, Fundora, was winning handily.

Fundora’s next and most recent fight, against Tim Tszyu, came about when Tszyu’s original opponent Keith Thurman was a late scratch with a biceps injury. Fundora, who was already on the card, paired against Serhii Bohackuk, was bumped into the main event and rose to the occasion, upsetting the Australian by a split, but fair, decision. There was, however, an extenuating circumstance. In round two, Tszyu ducked low and ran into Fundora’s bony elbow which opened a deep cut on his hairline that bled copiously throughout the bout.

Considering how Tim Tszyu was manhandled by Bakhram Murtazaliev, one could argue that Thurman’s injury, and the rejiggering it provoked, was fortuitous for Sebastian Fundora who found himself thrust against a less formidable opponent.

Regardless of whether Booker returns to Stamford as a world title-holder or a former world title challenger, he will always be a champion at the Revolution Training fitness center on Elmcroft Road where Chordale hangs his hat, practicing his craft and mentoring at-risk youth 8-to-18 in his “Go The Distance” program. Judge Gary White’s instincts were pretty good. Spared from prison, Chordale Booker has become a rock of the community.

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Notes and Nuggets from Thomas Hauser: Callum Walsh Returns to Madison Square Garden

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On Sunday, March 16 (the night before St. Patrick’s Day), Callum Walsh continued his move up the junior-middleweight ranks with a brutal first-round knockout of Dean Sutherland at the Hulu Theatre at Madison Square Garden. The seven-bout card promoted by Tom Loeffler featured seven Irish boxers. Walsh stole the show but two non-Irish fighters on the undercard caught the eye.

In the third fight of the evening, Cletus Seldin (known as “The Hebrew Hammer) took on Yeis Gabriel Solano. The last time Seldin fought at Madison Square Garden (March 15, 2024), he took the ring announcer’s microphone after a majority-decision win, dropped to one knee, held out a diamond engagement ring, and asked one Jessica Ostrowski to marry him. The future Mrs. Seldin (who was clad in black leather) said yes, and the happy couple paraded around the ring together. They were married on September 7.

“So I’ve got a ring now,” Seldin says. “And I love married life because I love Jessica.”

A cynic at ringside on Sunday night wondered if Jessica might serve Cletus with a summons and complaint for divorce in the ring after the fight. Not to worry. The couple seems happily married and, after Seldin eked out a majority decision over Solano (now winless in five fights dating back to 2019), Cletus and Jessica announced in the ring that they’re expecting the birth of their first child.

In the next fight of the evening, Irish heavyweight Thomas Carty (255 pounds) brought a 10-0 (9 KOs) record into the ring to face 409-pound Dajuan Calloway (10-3, 9 KOs, 1 KO by).

Carty-Calloway was a poor match for a prospect. A fighter gets relatively little credit for beating a 400-pound opponent. And the problems posed by a physical confrontation with a 400-pound mountain are considerable.

With fifty seconds left in round two, Carty collapsed to the canvas as Calloway spun him around on the inside. Thomas rose, limping badly on a clearly-injured left knee. And referee Jamil Antoine foolishly allowed the bout to continue.

Carty tried to circle away, fell again. And Antoine – more foolishly – instructed the fighters to fight on. There was a third fall that the referee ruled a knockdown. The bell rang. And then the fight was stopped. It goes in the record book as a knockout at 3:00 of the second round.

Worse for Carty, he now appears to be facing surgery followed by a long rehabilitation. There’s no way to know how much further damage was done to his knee in the forty seconds that he was clearly impaired and under assault by a 409-pound man who was trying to knock him unconscious.

But the night belonged to 23-year-old Callum Walsh.

Walsh is from Cork, Ireland, trains in California with Freddie Roach, and came into the ring with a 12-0 (10 KOs) record.

“He’s a pretty good fighter,” Roach says. “He’s getting better. And he works his ass off in the gym.”

Equally important in an age when social media and hype often supersede a fighter’s accomplishments in the ring as the key to marketability. Walsh has the enthusiastic backing of Dana White.

Callum seems more at ease with the media now than when he fought at Madison Square Garden a year ago. And he has a new look. His hair is shorter and no longer dyed blond.

“It’s a new year, so time for a new look,” Walsh explained. Later, he added, “I don’t want to be a prospect anymore. I want to be a contender. I expected the road to be tough. I’ve never had anything easy in my life. I’ve worked as a fisherman. I’ve worked on a cargo ship. I like this job a lot more. They have big plans for me. But I still have to do my job.”

Sutherland, age 26, was born in Scotland and has lived there his entire life. He came to New York with a 19-1 (7 KOs, 1 KO by) record and, prior to fighting Walsh, noted, “I’m under no illusions. Fighting an Irishman on St. Patrick’s Day in New York; it’s all being built up for him. If it goes to the scorecards, no matter how the fight goes, I’m unlikely to get the decision. But when the bell rings, it will be only me and Callum. I’ve watched his fights. I’ve studied his habits and rhythm. I’ve been through hard fights. He’s untested. This is my big opportunity. I’m not here to be part of Callum’s record.”

Talking is easier than fighting. When the hour of reckoning came, Walsh was faster, stronger, better-skilled, and hit harder than Sutherland. Indeed, Callum was so dominant in the early going that round one had the look of a 10-8 round without a knockdown. Then Sutherland was flattened by a right hook at the 2:45 mark and any thoughts as to scoring became irrelevant.

It was Walsh’s best showing to date, although it’s hard to know the degree to which Sutheralnd’s deficiencies contributed to that showing. What’s clear is that Callum is evolving as a fighter. And he’s the kind of fighter who fits nicely with the concept that Turki Alalshikh and Dana White have voiced for a new boxing promotional company. Whether they’ll be willing to put Walsh in tough is an open issue. UFC puts its fighters in tough.

****

There was a void at ringside on Sunday night. After more than four decades on the job, George Ward is no longer with the New York State Athletic Commission.

Ward was the model of what a commission inspector should be. I watched him in the corner and in dressing rooms countless times over the years. A handful of inspectors were as good as he was. Nobody was better. Later, as a deputy commissioner, he performed the thankless back-of-the-house administrative duties on fight night while other deputy commissioners were enjoying the scene at ringside.

George and Robert Orlando (who, like George, is a former New York City corrections officer) also normally presided over pre-fight weigh-ins. That’s worth mentioning here because it ties to one of the more unfortunate incidents that occurred during the tenure of former NYSAC executive director Kim Sumbler.

On November 1, 2019, Kelvin Gastelum weighed in for a UFC 244 match against Darren Till to be contested at Madison Square Garden. The contract weight for the fight was 186 pounds. It was known throughout the MMA community that Gastelum had been having trouble making weight. Before stepping on the scale, he stripped down completely naked and a towel was lifted in front of him to shield his genitals from public view. Then, to everyone’s surprise, his weight was announced as 184 pounds (two pounds under the contract weight).

How did Gastelum make weight? Video of the weigh-in showed him resting his elbow on his coach as he stood on the scale.

Why am I mentioning this now?

Ward and Orlando know all the tricks. While they were readying for the Gastelum-Till weigh-in, Sumbler told them that they were being replaced on the scales by two other commission employees who had been brought to New York City from upstate. They asked why and were told, “Because I said so.”

George Ward was one of the behind-the-scenes people who make boxing work. He’ll be missed.

****

Six years ago, Gene Pantalone wrote a traditional biography of former world lightweight champion Lew Jenkins. Now he has written – shall we say – a creative biography of lightweight great Freddie Welsh.

Welsh was born in Wales in 1886 but spent most of his ring career in the United States. He captured the lightweight crown by decision over Willie Ritchie in 1914 and relinquished it to Benny Leonard three years later. BocRec.com credits him with a 74-5-7 (34 KOs) ring record in bouts that are verified and were officially scored. If “newspaper decisions” are added to the mix, the numbers rise to 121 wins, 29 losses, and 17 draws. Many of the losses came when Welsh was long past his prime. He’s on the short list of boxing’s greatest fighters. The only knock out he suffered was when he lost the title to Leonard.

Chasing The Great Gatsby is styled as a biography of Welsh and also an advocacy brief in support of the proposition that Welsh was the inspiration and model for the title character in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s seminal novel The Great Gatsby. I’m unsure how factually accurate Pantalone’s work is in some places. Also, too often, he uses big words when small ones will suffice. For example:

“He was a pugilistic virtuoso, a pummeling poet with fists of fury and a keen intellect. His duality was evident in every aspect of his being, an amalgamation of the vicious and the benevolent.”

Over the course of 349 pages, that weighs a reader down.

Still, there are some interesting observations and nuggets of information to be mined in Chasing The Great Gatsby. Among my favorites are Pantalone’s description of Jack Dempsey training for his historic 1921 fight against George Carpentier at a “health farm” that Welsh owned in New Jersey; Pantelone’s description of how the stadium that hosted Dempsey-Carpentier was built; and Pantalone’s evaluation of the fight itself, which he calls “a spectacle of titanic proportions,” before adding,” The truth was inescapable. The fight had not lived up to its grandeur, but the event did.”

****

Several of the books that Robert Lipsyte has written during his storied career as a journalist focus on boxing; most notably, Free to Be Muhammad Ali and The Contender (a young adult novel). Lipsyte’s most recent book – Rhino’s Run (published by Harper) – is a young adult novel keyed to high school football, not the sweet science. But the opening sentence bears repeating:

“Punching Josh Kremens didn’t feel as good as I thought it would, and I’d been thinking about it for five years.”

Be honest! Don’t you want to read more?

Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – MY MOTHER and ME  is a personal memoir available at Amazon.com. https://www.amazon.com/My-Mother-Me-Thomas-Hauser/dp/1955836191/ref=sr_1_1?crid=5C0TEN4M9ZAH&keywords=thomas+hauser&qid=1707662513&sprefix=thomas+hauser%2Caps%2C80&sr=8-1

            In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism. In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

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Ever-Improving Callum Walsh KOs Dean Sutherland at Madison Square Garden

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Irish luck was not involved as Callum Walsh won the battle of hard-hitting southpaws over Dean Sutherland by knockout on Sunday.

One right hook was all it took.

“You’re never going to beat the Irish,” said Walsh.

In a contest between Celtic super welterweights Walsh (13-0, 11 KOs) retained the WBC Continental America’s title against Sutherland (19-2, 7 KOs) in quick fashion at the Madison Square Garden Theater in Manhattan.

Usually fights between southpaws can be confusing to both contestants. But Walsh had expressed a fondness for fighting lefthanders then vividly exhibited the reasons why.

Walsh, 24, a native of Cork, Ireland, now living and training in Los Angeles, quickly demonstrated why he likes fighting lefties with a steady flow of combinations from the opening bell.

He did not hesitate.

Sutherland, 26, had only lost once before and that was more than two years ago. Against Walsh the Scottish fighter was not hesitant to advance forward but was caught with lefts and right hooks.

After two minutes of scattered blows, Sutherland fought back valiantly and when cornered, Walsh tapped two jabs then unleashed a right hook through the Scottish fighter’s gloves that floored the Aberdeen fighter for the count at 2:45 of the first round.

“I’m feeling very good. Dean Sutherland is a very good opponent. I knew he was going to be dangerous. That was my best opponent,” said Walsh.

It was the fourth consecutive knockout win for Walsh who seems to improve with every single combat.

“I’m looking forward to the future. I’m getting stronger and stronger,” said Walsh who is trained by Hall of Fame trainer Freddie Roach. “Anyone that comes to me I will take him out.”

Other Bouts

Super featherweight Feargal McCrory (17-1, 9 KOs) survived a knockdown in the fourth to out-muscle Keenan Carbajal (25-5-1, 17 KOs) and batter down the Arizona fighter in the seventh and again in the eighth with volume punching.

Carbajal was deducted a point early for holding in round two, but regained that point when he floored the Irish southpaw during an exchange in the fourth.

Despite suffering a knockdown, McCrory continued stalking Carbajal and floored him in the seventh and eighth with battering blows. Referee Arthur Mercante Jr. stopped the fight without a count.

A rematch between two Irish super middleweights saw Emmet Brennan (6-0) remain undefeated by unanimous decision over Kevin Cronin (9-3-1).

Cronin started quickly with a pressure style and punches flowing against Brennan who resorted to covering and countering. Though it looked like Cronin was building up a lead with a busier style, the judges preferred Brennan’s judicious counters. No knockdowns were scored as all three judges saw Brennan the winner 98-92 after 10 rounds.

Dajuan Calloway (11-3, 9 KOs) emerged the winner by technical knockout over Thomas Carty (10-1) who was unable to continue after two rounds when his leg tangled and thereafter was unable to stand. Because he could not continue the fight was ruled a technical knockout win for Calloway in the heavyweight match.

Also

Cletus “Hebrew Hammer” Seldin (29-1, 23 Kos) defeated Yeis Solano (15-5) by majority decision after eight rounds in a super lightweight contest.

Donagh Keary (1-0) defeated Geral Alicea-Romero (0-1-1) by decision after four.

Light heavyweights Sean O’Bradaigh (0-0-1) and Jefferson Almeida (0-1-1) fought to a majority draw after four.

Photo credit: JP Yim

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