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Transgender Boxer Patricio Manuel Breaks New Ground at Fantasy Springs

The continuing encroachment of something known as “political correctness” in American and global society sometimes comes as a jolt to stodgy traditionalists, like me. I just had to shake my head, incredulous, at a news report from 2014 I only recently came across that hinted at the radical changes that, for better or worse, are becoming more and more commonplace.
Four years ago the administrators who run the school system in Lincoln, Neb., launched a campaign to make their classrooms more “gender-inclusive,” meaning teachers could no longer refer to boys and girls as, well, boys and girls. “We have kids who come to us with a whole variety of circumstances, and we need to equitably serve all kids,” Brenda Leggiardo, the district’s coordinator of social workers and counselors, told the Lincoln Journal Star. So instead of asking boys and girls to line up as boys and girls, teachers were encouraged to segregate the children by whether they prefer skateboards or bikes, or whether they like milk or juice. The memo also suggested that all transgender students be referred to as “purple penguins,” presumably without regard for their preferences regarding liquid nourishment at lunchtime.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district in North Carolina later adopted similar “gender-inclusive” guidelines, which caused me to wonder when this small snowball rolling downhill would become an avalanche, and when a portion of the PC-orchestrated new world order would branch off into the sports world. And then it occurred to me: it already has.
The latest example of athletic gender-bending came on Dec. 8 at the Fantasy Springs Resort Casino in Indio, Calif., when Patricio Manuel, a 33-year-old transgender male who had fought in the 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials as a woman, scored a four-round unanimous decision over Mexican super featherweight Hugo Aguilar. It was the first sanctioned professional boxing match involving a transgender participant, and Manuel (pictured) vowed it won’t be the last.
“I wouldn’t trade any of it. It was worth everything I went through to get to this point,” Manuel, who underwent complex medical treatments, including surgery and hormone therapy, told the Los Angeles Times. “I’m a professional boxer now.
“I’ve got some naysayers out there – I need to prove that I deserve to be in there as well. I’m not in here for one show, one fight – this is something I love. I’m not done with this sport and I’ll be back.”
Well, maybe. But much will depend on the willingness of male-from-birth fighters in the “Me, Too” era –in which men who physically abuse women, or use positions of authority to take advantage of them sexually, are rightly chastised — to be paired with Manuel. Some men will reasonably believe that, if they defeat Manuel, and particularly by knockout, they would be criticized for beating up someone who used to be a woman. It is possible, and perhaps likely, that such criticism would arise; an online search I conducted produced a video of a female soldier in the U.S. Army who had bragged that she could whip any male Marine stationed at their joint base in a boxing match. Such a fight was arranged (it can be seen on YouTube) and the Marine pummeled the lady soldier from pillar to post in the first round, whereupon he was booed unmercifully, even by his fellow Marines.
I covered the flip side of such a transgender role reversal in the 1970s, when I authored a feature story on the opposition encountered by tennis player Renee Richards after her sex-reassignment surgery. Formerly known as Richard Raskind, in his earlier incarnation he was an excellent athlete, lettering in tennis, football, baseball and swimming in high school before going on to Yale, where he was captain of the men’s tennis team. In the 1970s, however, Raskind came to the realization that he had long felt more female than male and began the process of transition. The transformation complete, the renamed Renee Richards competed as a woman in the 1976 U.S. Open, and shortly thereafter the United States Tennis Association, in apparent reaction to her arrival on the scene, began requiring genetic screening for female players. Richards challenged that policy and the New York Supreme Court ruled in her favor, a landmark case in transgender rights.
But her victory in the courts was not so warmly received by many women on the court, who complained that the 6-foot-1 Richards, despite being in her early 40s, had physical advantages, such as a booming lefthanded serve, that blurred the line between who she had been as a man and who she had become through the auspices of modern medicine.
The most famous male vs. female matchup, one that drew 30,000-plus on-site spectators to the Astrodome in Houston and a huge nationwide television audience on Sept. 21, 1973, pitted 55-year-old former Wimbledon champion Bobby Riggs against Billie Jean King, 29, arguably the top woman player of her era and an unabashed proponent of the feminist movement. The “Battle of the Sexes” was spurred by Riggs’ 6-2, 6-1 victory over another standout female player, Margaret Court, and his constant chirping that, even at his advanced age, the chatty chauvinist could take down any of the sport’s top women. King accepted the challenge and struck a blow for her cause with 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 victory. She accepted the $100,000 winner’s check from, interestingly, smiling heavyweight champion George Foreman.
King’s coronation eventually helped bring about parity with the men in purse money at major tournaments, which was significant, but what, really, had it proved? Was it merely an evening of the score for Riggs having embarrassed Court? That a great woman player in her prime could beat the shorts off a geezer of a guy who had not played competitive tournament tennis in 22 years?
With apologies to William Shakespeare, another male vs. female pairing that was full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, took place on Oct. 10, 1999, in Mercer Arena in Seattle, Wash., when boxer Margaret McGregor scored a four-round unanimous decision over fill-in opponent Loi Chow, a jockey by trade who was 0-2 in pro bouts, the most recent coming three years earlier. The then-36-year-old McGregor, who had an extensive kickboxing and boxing background and was 3-0 in pro boxing matches against women, towered over Chow and dominated him from the outset. Snarky commentators regarded the fight as a farce, maybe more than they might have had not McGregor’s originally scheduled and more talented opponent, Hector Morales, dropped out.
There has not been a sanctioned boxing match between a man and a woman since, and, hopefully, there never will be another, not in an era when statistics indicate that every nine seconds a woman is facing domestic battery in America.
There is, admittedly, a curiosity element attached to these events. I was at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas on Sept. 25, 1992, for an exhibition match pitting 40-year-old tennis great Jimmy Connors against a female counterpart, 35-year-old Martina Navratilova, in what was billed as “Battle of the Sexes II.” Rules aimed at leveling the playing field limited Connors to one serve and obliging him to cover half of each the doubles alleys, four additional feet in all. Despite those handicaps, Connors won, 7-5, 6-2, before a sellout crowd of 13,832 and a national pay-per-view TV audience.
Strangely enough, I have been portrayed as being on both sides of the philosophical divide concerning male/female issues. I strongly support the notion of equal pay for equal work for both genders, and I endorsed the creation of the Christy Martin Award that goes to the Female Fighter of the Year, which was presented by the Boxing Writers Association of America for the first time earlier this year to Cecilia Braekhus in New York. To one regular poster to the TSS site, who apparently is of the opinion that women are only good for baking cookies and bearing children, those positions stamped me as some sort of non-macho pansy. But I also oppose the notion of military women as combat troops, which some would say makes me as much of a hairy-knuckled Neanderthal as the now-deceased Riggs.
As the son of a wonderful mother, husband of a terrific wife, and father of two great daughters, I have always believed that anyone regardless of sexual orientation can achieve as much as their talent and ambition will take them. But whether the deep thinkers on the school boards in Lincoln and Charlotte care to admit it or not, there are some gaps, in an athletic sense, that political correctness cannot bridge. It is patently ridiculous to allow boys to compete in girls’ interscholastic sports because their schools don’t field boys’ volleyball, field hockey or softball teams. Size, strength and testosterone almost always give the guys a winning edge in those instances.
Boxing, more so than in other sports, represents a Grand Canyonesque chasm of separation. Claressa Shields is a two-time Olympic gold medalist, but no one expects her to swap punches with Canelo Alvarez or Gennady Golovkin now or ever. Braekus is undefeated and the undisputed women’s welterweight champion, but there is no groundswell to put her in the ring against Terence Crawford or Errol Spence Jr.
We should enjoy our sporting heroes, and heroines, for who and what they are. Let boys be boys and girls be girls and transgenders whatever the heck they choose to be. And a Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
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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Avila Perspective, Chap. 323: British Family Feud and More

ext generation rivals Conor Benn and Chris Eubank Jr. carry on the family legacy of feudal warring in the prize ring on Saturday.
This is huge in British boxing.
Eubank (34-3, 25 KOs) holds the fringe IBO middleweight title but won’t be defending it against the smaller welterweight Benn (23-0, 14 KOs) on Saturday, April 26, at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London. DAZN will stream the Matchroom Boxing card.
This is about family pride.
The parents of Eubank and Benn actually began the feud in the 1990s.
Papa Nigel Benn fought Papa Chris Eubank twice. Losing as a middleweight in November 1990 at Birmingham, England, then fighting to a draw as a super middleweight in October 1993 in Manchester. Both were world title fights.
Eubank was undefeated and won the WBO middleweight world title in 1990 against Nigel Benn by knockout. He defended it three times before moving up and winning the vacant WBO super middleweight title in September 1991. He defended the super middleweight title 14 times until suffering his first pro defeat in March 1995 against Steve Collins.
Benn won the WBO middleweight title in April 1990 against Doug DeWitt and defended it once before losing to Eubank in November 1990. He moved up in weight and took the WBC super middleweight title from Mauro Galvano in Italy by technical knockout in October 1992. He defended the title nine times until losing in March 1996. His last fight was in November 1996, a loss to Steve Collins.
Animosity between the two families continues this weekend in the boxing ring.
Conor Benn, the son of Nigel, has fought mostly as a welterweight but lately has participated in the super welterweight division. He is several inches shorter in height than Eubank but has power and speed. Kind of a British version of Gervonta “Tank” Davis.
“It’s always personal, every opponent I fight is personal. People want to say it’s strictly business, but it’s never business. If someone is trying to put their hands on me, trying to render me unconscious, it’s never business,” said Benn.
This fight was scheduled twice before and cut short twice due to failed PED tests by Benn. The weight limit agreed upon is 160 pounds.
Eubank, a natural middleweight, has exchanged taunts with Benn for years. He recently avenged a loss to Liam Smith with a knockout victory in September 2023.
“This fight isn’t about size or weight. It’s about skill. It’s about dedication. It’s about expertise and all those areas in which I excel in,” said Eubank. “I have many, many more years of experience over Conor Benn, and that will be the deciding factor of the night.”
Because this fight was postponed twice, the animosity between the two feuding fighters has increased the attention of their fans. Both fighters are anxious to flatten each other.
“He’s another opponent in my way trying to crush my dreams. trying to take food off my plate and trying to render me unconscious. That’s how I look at him,” said Benn.
Eubank smiles.
“Whether it’s boxing, whether it’s a gun fight. Defense, offense, foot movement, speed, power. I am the superior boxer in each of those departments and so many more – which is why I’m so confident,” he said.
Supporting Bout
Former world champion Liam Smith (33-4-1, 20 KOs) tangles with Ireland’s Aaron McKenna (19-0, 10 KOs) in a middleweight fight set for 12 rounds on the Benn-Eubank undercard in London.
“Beefy” Smith has long been known as one of the fighting Smith brothers and recently lost to Eubank a year and a half ago. It was only the second time in 38 bouts he had been stopped. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez did it several years ago.
McKenna is a familiar name in Southern California. The Irish fighter fought numerous times on Golden Boy Promotion cards between 2017 and 2019 before returning to the United Kingdom and his assault on continuing the middleweight division. This is a big step for the tall Irish fighter.
It’s youth versus experience.
“I’ve been calling for big fights like this for the last two or three years, and it’s a fight I’m really excited for. I plan to make the most of it and make a statement win on Saturday night,” said McKenna, one of two fighting brothers.
Monster in L.A.
Japan’s super star Naoya “Monster” Inoue arrived in Los Angeles for last day workouts before his Las Vegas showdown against Ramon Cardenas on Sunday May 4, at T-Mobile Arena. ESPN will televise and stream the Top Rank card.
It’s been four years since the super bantamweight world champion performed in the US and during that time Naoya (29-0, 26 KOs) gathered world titles in different weight divisions. The Japanese slugger has also gained fame as perhaps the best fighter on the planet. Cardenas is 26-1 with 14 KOs.
Pomona Fights
Super featherweights Mathias Radcliffe (9-0-1) and Ezequiel Flores (6-4) lead a boxing card called “DMG Night of Champions” on Saturday April 26, at the historic Fox Theater in downtown Pomona, Calif.
Michaela Bracamontes (11-2-1) and Jesus Torres Beltran (8-4-1) will be fighting for a regional WBC super featherweight title. More than eight bouts are scheduled.
Doors open at 6 p.m. For ticket information go to: www.tix.com/dmgnightofchampions
Fights to Watch
Sat. DAZN 9 a.m. Conor Benn (23-0) vs Chris Eubank Jr. (34-3); Liam Smith (33-4-1) vs Aaron McKenna (19-0).
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Floyd Mayweather has Another Phenom and his name is Curmel Moton

Floyd Mayweather has Another Phenom and his name is Curmel Moton
In any endeavor, the defining feature of a phenom is his youth. Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Bryce Harper was a phenom. He was on the radar screen of baseball’s most powerful player agents when he was 14 years old.
Curmel Moton, who turns 19 in June, is a phenom. Of all the young boxing stars out there, wrote James Slater in July of last year, “Curmel Moton is the one to get most excited about.”
Moton was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. His father Curtis Moton, a barber by trade, was a big boxing fan and specifically a big fan of Floyd Mayweather Jr. When Curmel was six, Curtis packed up his wife (Curmel’s stepmom) and his son and moved to Las Vegas. Curtis wanted his son to get involved in boxing and there was no better place to develop one’s latent talents than in Las Vegas where many of the sport’s top practitioners came to train.
Many father-son relationships have been ruined, or at least frayed, by a father’s unrealistic expectations for his son, but when it came to boxing, the boy was a natural and he felt right at home in the gym.
The gym the Motons patronized was the Mayweather Boxing Club. Curtis took his son there in hopes of catching the eye of the proprietor. “Floyd would occasionally drop by the gym and I was there so often that he came to recognize me,” says Curmel. What he fails to add is that the trainers there had Floyd’s ear. “This kid is special,” they told him.
It costs a great deal of money for a kid to travel around the country competing in a slew of amateur boxing tournaments. Only a few have the luxury of a sponsor. For the vast majority, fund raisers such as car washes keep the wheels greased.
Floyd Mayweather stepped in with the financial backing needed for the Motons to canvas the country in tournaments. As an amateur, Curmel was — take your pick — 156-7 or 144-6 or 61-3 (the latter figure from boxrec). Regardless, at virtually every tournament at which he appeared, Curmel Moton was the cock of the walk.
Before the pandemic, Floyd Mayweather Jr had a stable of boxers he promoted under the banner of “The Money Team.” In talking about his boxers, Floyd was understated with one glaring exception – Gervonta “Tank” Davis, now one of boxing’s top earners.
When Floyd took to praising Curmel Moton with the same effusive language, folks stood up and took notice.
Curmel made his pro debut on Sept. 30, 2023, at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on the undercard of the super middleweight title fight between Canelo Alvarez and Jermell Charlo. After stopping his opponent in the opening round, he addressed a flock of reporters in the media room with Floyd standing at his side. “I felt ready,” he said, “I knew I had Floyd behind me. He believes in me. I had the utmost confidence going into the fight. And I went in there and did what I do.”
Floyd ventured the opinion that Curmel was already a better fighter than Leigh Wood, the reigning WBA world featherweight champion who would successfully defend his belt the following week.
Moton’s boxing style has been described as a blend of Floyd Mayweather and Tank Davis. “I grew up watching Floyd, so it’s natural I have some similarities to him,” says Curmel who sparred with Tank in late November of 2021 as Davis was preparing for his match with Isaac “Pitbull” Cruz. Curmell says he did okay. He was then 15 years old and still in school; he dropped out as soon as he reached the age of 16.
Curmel is now 7-0 with six KOs, four coming in the opening round. He pitched an 8-round shutout the only time he was taken the distance. It’s not yet official, but he returns to the ring on May 31 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas where Caleb Plant and Jermall Charlo are co-featured in matches conceived as tune-ups for a fall showdown. The fight card will reportedly be free for Amazon Prime Video subscribers.
Curmel’s presumptive opponent is Renny Viamonte, a 28-year-old Las Vegas-based Cuban with a 4-1-1 (2) record. It will be Curmel’s first professional fight with Kofi Jantuah the chief voice in his corner. A two-time world title challenger who began his career in his native Ghana, the 50-year-old Jantuah has worked almost exclusively with amateurs, a recent exception being Mikaela Mayer.
It would seem that the phenom needs a tougher opponent than Viamonte at this stage of his career. However, the match is intriguing in one regard. Viamonte is lanky. Listed at 5-foot-11, he will have a seven-inch height advantage.
Keeping his weight down has already been problematic for Moton. He tipped the scales at 128 ½ for his most recent fight. His May 31 bout, he says, will be contested at 135 and down the road it’s reasonable to think he will blossom into a welterweight. And with each bump up in weight, his short stature will theoretically be more of a handicap.
For fun, we asked Moton to name the top fighter on his pound-for-pound list. “[Oleksandr] Usyk is number one right now,” he said without hesitation,” great footwork, but guys like Canelo, Crawford, Inoue, and Bivol are right there.”
It’s notable that there isn’t a young gun on that list. Usyk is 38, a year older than Crawford; Inoue is the pup at age 32.
Moton anticipates that his name will appear on pound-for-pound lists within the next two or three years. True, history is replete with examples of phenoms who flamed out early, but we wouldn’t bet against it.
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Arne’s Almanac: The First Boxing Writers Assoc. of America Dinner Was Quite the Shindig

The first annual dinner of the Boxing Writers Association of America was staged on April 25, 1926 in the grand ballroom of New York’s Hotel Astor, an edifice that rivaled the original Waldorf Astoria as the swankiest hotel in the city. Back then, the organization was known as the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York.
The ballroom was configured to hold 1200 for the banquet which was reportedly oversubscribed. Among those listed as agreeing to attend were the governors of six states (New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Maryland) and the mayors of 10 of America’s largest cities.
In 1926, radio was in its infancy and the digital age was decades away (and inconceivable). So, every journalist who regularly covered boxing was a newspaper and/or magazine writer, editor, or cartoonist. And at this juncture in American history, there were plenty of outlets for someone who wanted to pursue a career as a sportswriter and had the requisite skills to get hired.
The following papers were represented at the inaugural boxing writers’ dinner:
New York Times
New York News
New York World
New York Sun
New York Journal
New York Post
New York Mirror
New York Telegram
New York Graphic
New York Herald Tribune
Brooklyn Eagle
Brooklyn Times
Brooklyn Standard Union
Brooklyn Citizen
Bronx Home News
This isn’t a complete list because a few of these papers, notably the New York World and the New York Journal, had strong afternoon editions that functioned as independent papers. Plus, scribes from both big national wire services (Associated Press and UPI) attended the banquet and there were undoubtedly a smattering of scribes from papers in New Jersey and Connecticut.
Back then, the event’s organizer Nat Fleischer, sports editor of the New York Telegram and the driving force behind The Ring magazine, had little choice but to limit the journalistic component of the gathering to writers in the New York metropolitan area. There wasn’t a ballroom big enough to accommodate a good-sized response if he had extended the welcome to every boxing writer in North America.
The keynote speaker at the inaugural dinner was New York’s charismatic Jazz Age mayor James J. “Jimmy” Walker, architect of the transformative Walker Law of 1920 which ushered in a new era of boxing in the Empire State with a template that would guide reformers in many other jurisdictions.
Prizefighting was then associated with hooligans. In his speech, Mayor Walker promised to rid the sport of their ilk. “Boxing, as you know, is closest to my heart,” said hizzoner. “So I tell you the police force is behind you against those who would besmirch or injure boxing. Rowdyism doesn’t belong in this town or in your game.” (In 1945, Walker would be the recipient of the Edward J. Neil Memorial Award given for meritorious service to the sport. The oldest of the BWAA awards, the previous recipients were all active or former boxers. The award, no longer issued under that title, was named for an Associated Press sportswriter and war correspondent who died from shrapnel wounds covering the Spanish Civil War.)
Another speaker was well-traveled sportswriter Wilbur Wood, then affiliated with the Brooklyn Citizen. He told the assembly that the aim of the organization was two-fold: to help defend the game against its detractors and to promote harmony among the various factions.
Of course, the 1926 dinner wouldn’t have been as well-attended without the entertainment. According to press dispatches, Broadway stars and performers from some of the city’s top nightclubs would be there to regale the attendees. Among the names bandied about were vaudeville superstars Sophie Tucker and Jimmy Durante, the latter of whom would appear with his trio, Durante, (Lou) Clayton, and (Eddie) Jackson.
There was a contraction of New York newspapers during the Great Depression. Although empirical evidence is lacking, the inaugural boxing writers dinner was likely the largest of its kind. Fifteen years later, in 1941, the event drew “more than 200” according to a news report. There was no mention of entertainment.
In 1950, for the first time, the annual dinner was opened to the public. For $25, a civilian could get a meal and mingle with some of his favorite fighters. Sugar Ray Robinson was the Edward J. Neil Award winner that year, honored for his ring exploits and for donating his purse from the Charlie Fusari fight to the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund.
There was no formal announcement when the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York was re-christened the Boxing Writers Association of America, but by the late 1940s reporters were referencing the annual event as simply the boxing writers dinner. By then, it had become traditional to hold the annual affair in January, a practice discontinued after 1971.
The winnowing of New York’s newspaper herd plus competing banquets in other parts of the country forced Nat Fleischer’s baby to adapt. And more adaptations will be necessary in the immediate future as the future of the BWAA, as it currently exists, is threatened by new technologies. If the forthcoming BWAA dinner (April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in mid-Manhattan) were restricted to wordsmiths from the traditional print media, the gathering would be too small to cover the nut and the congregants would be drawn disproportionately from the geriatric class.
Some of those adaptations have already started. Last year, Las Vegas resident Sean Zittel, a recent UNLV graduate, had the distinction of becoming the first videographer welcomed into the BWAA. With more and more people getting their news from sound bites, rather than the written word, the videographer serves an important function.
The reporters who conducted interviews with pen and paper have gone the way of the dodo bird and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A taped interview for a “talkie” has more integrity than a story culled from a paper and pen interview because it is unfiltered. Many years ago, some reporters, after interviewing the great Joe Louis, put words in his mouth that made him seem like a dullard, words consistent with the Sambo stereotype. In other instances, the language of some athletes was reconstructed to the point where the reader would think the athlete had a second job as an English professor.
The content created by videographers is free from that bias. More of them will inevitably join the BWAA and similar organizations in the future.
Photo: Nat Fleischer is flanked by Sugar Ray Robinson and Tony Zale at the 1947 boxing writers dinner.
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