The Hauser Report: Jermell and Jermall Charlo on Fox

Published

6 years ago

December 24, 2018

On December 22, the Charlo twins – Jermell and Jermall – fought Tony Harrison and Matt Korobov at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

The Charlos are 28 years old and have been fighting professionally for ten years.

Jermell entered the ring with a 31-0 (15 KOs) record and was the reigning WBC 154-pound beltholder. He shone brightly in a first-round demolition of Erickson Lubin last year.

Jermall had compiled a 27-0, (21 KOs) record. He previously held the IBF 154-pound title and now campaigns as a middleweight. A 2016 decision over a faded Austin Trout was the most notable victory on his ring ledger.

Everything seems personal for the Charlos. It’s hard to imagine either brother outsourcing revenge to the other (as Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko did on several occasions) and finding satisfaction in payback that wasn’t beaten out with his own fists.

Jermell vs. Tony Harrison and Jermall vs. Matt Korobov were thought to be stay-busy Christmas presents for the Charlos. Neither brother gives an opponent much to work with. They’re good defensive fighters who strike swiftly when opportunity beckons. Jermell was a 10-to-1 betting favorite over Harrison while Jermall was listed at 20-to-1 over Korobov.

Several disquieting themes underlay the promotion. The first of these revolved around the fact that, on November 1, both Charlos “missed” tests that were to be administered by the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association (VADA) pursuant to the WBC Clean Boxing Program. Initially, the New York State Athletic Commission sought to distance itself from the issue, saying that the WBC-VADA tests were “separate from the New York State Athletic Commission’s Rules & Regulations.” But that was an untenable position.

Piecing together from multiple sources what happened next, the NYSAC then asked the Charlos for a more detailed explanation of why they’d missed their tests and failed to answer their cellphones on November 1. Previously, Jermall had tweeted that the brothers had been doing “promotional stuff.” But the commission didn’t get an adequate response. Instead, it was suggested from above that the commission back off on requiring the Charlos to document the reason why they’d missed the tests and, instead, administer new tests. In today’s world of microdosing, this passes for a bad joke. And the joke became even less funny when the NYSAC had one brother’s test administered by Quest Diagnostics and the other brother’s test administered by Lab Corp.

Quest Diagnostics and Lab Corp can tell the difference between blood and urine. But they don’t do state-of-the-art testing (such as carbon isotope ratio testing) for banned performance enhancing drugs.

On December 14, Greg Leon of Boxing Talk interviewed Tony Harrison and told him, “I’ve got to ask what you think about the Charlo’s, who have two different coaches, missing drug tests on the same day?”

Harrison gave a vague response.

“Allow me to ask the question in a different way,” Leon pressed. “If you were the champion, would you ever defend your title against a challenger who missed a drug test?”

“No,” Harrison answered. “Honestly, I would not. It leaves too much of a gray area. I wouldn’t do it, but it’s out of my hands. There’s literally nothing I can do. I just have to take it for how it is, man, the life of being a B-side fighter.”

Then, on December 15, it was revealed that Willie Monroe Jr, who’d been scheduled to fight Jermall Charlo on December 22, had tested positive after taking a banned supplement called Nugenix (a testosterone booster). Monroe was removed from the card and replaced by Matt Korobov, which sent the message that, in New York, fighters who might be dirty should simply miss tests and they’ll be allowed to fight.

Four years ago, the New York State Athletic Commission said that it wouldn’t license Korobov to box because of what it termed a congenital brain condition. Some other jurisdictions don’t consider this particular condition to be a potential danger and, subsequent to New York’s decision, granted Korobov a license to box. To date, the NYSAC has refused to explain when it changed its standard on this issue and the reason for the change.

Finally, when asked about Monroe at a December 19 media workout, Jermall and Jermell Charlo engaged in what one might consider an exercise in hypocrisy.

“Cheaters never win,” Jermall offered.

Jermell was more expansive, proclaiming, “They should suspend him from boxing. Monroe shouldn’t be allowed to come back. I’m glad they was able to catch this beforehand. It sucks that someone would cheat, and they know that they’re cheating. We need the sport to be cleaned up. Take all his bread. Take them away from the sport. They shouldn’t be allowed back. They should be banned for life and probably sentenced to a jail sentence or something. Yeah, send their ass to jail!”

Bottom line: Jermall Charlo vs. Matt Korobov at Barclays Center on December 22 matched a fighter who missed a PED test in November under questionable circumstances against a fighter who, four years ago, was unable to obtain a license to box in New York because of a congenital brain condition.

When fight night arrived, Jermell Charlo vs. Tony Harrison was a tedious tactical encounter. Harrison fought much of the bout like a man who would be happy to survive for twelve rounds, pick up his paycheck, and go home. The general consensus was that Jermell won nine of the twelve rounds. Jimmy Lennon Jr. announced that there was a unanimous decision and read the three judges’ scorecards: 116-112 (Robin Taylor), 115-113 (Ron McNair), and 115-113 (Julie Lederman). That left people wondering how two judges could each have given Harrison five rounds. The wonderment then turned to disbelief when Lennon uttered the words “And the new WBC super-welterweight champion of the world . . .”

Ironically, the Charlo-Harrison decision went against the house fighter. This suggests that poor judging rather than corruption was at its core.

In the nightcap, Jermall Charlo pounded out a unanimous decison victory over Matt Korobov by a 119-108, 116-112, 116-112 margin. Jermall won the fight, but 119-108 was off the mark.

Perhaps the most notable thing about the December 22 fight card was that it marked the inaugural telecast of boxing under a recently-negotiated contract between Premier Boxing Champions and Fox.

On September 5, 2018, PBC and Fox announced a four-year-deal that calls for the Fox broadcast network to air ten “marquee” fight cards per year with an additional twelve cards being shown annually on FS1 and Fox Deportes. The announcement held out the promise of championship-caliber boxing on a free platform. Thus, a lot of fight fans were disappointed on November 13 when Fox announced its fight schedule through March 16, 2019.

The two Charlo fights were joined on December 22 with a 20-to-1 match-up between Dominic Breazeale and Carlos Negron. January 26, 2019, will feature Keith Thurman vs. Josesito Lopez with the odds currently favoring Thurman by 10-to-1. Virtually all of the PBC-Fox main events announced to date have what amounts to a designated winner and a designated loser.

Let’s draw an analogy to another sport. Fox televises Big Ten college football. The schedule for the first four months of its boxing series is equivalent to televising Michigan vs. Rutgers and Ohio State vs. Minnesota again and again and never getting to Penn State vs. Wisconsin or Michigan vs. Ohio State.

The core of the Fox commentating team handled itself well during the first telecast. There were too many voices. But Kenny Albert handled blow-by-blow chores smoothly. Joe Goossen and Ray Mancini have been in the trenches. And Lennox Lewis adds dignity and class to anything he touches.

The use of Larry Hazzard as Fox’s “rules expert and unofficial scorer” raises an interesting issue. Harold Lederman resigned as a ring judge in New York when he took a commentating position with HBO. So did Steve Weisfeld when Weisfeld worked as a rules expert for HBO. Hazzard is commissioner of the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board. And his son, Larry Hazzard Jr, was the judge who scored Charlo-Korobov 119-108 in favor of Jermall.

But for boxing fans, the more important issue is this:

For all the money that’s being put into the system now by Fox, ESPN, DAZN, and Showtime, we should be seeing better fights than we’re seeing. Each of the networks maintains that quality control is built into its respective output deal with its favored promoter or promoters. But in today’s world, when “quality control” is measured in terms of “championship” belts and top-ten rankings, it means nothing.

Championship belts are dispensed today like chocolates from a vending machine. There’s a never-ending supply of bogus beltholders and undeserving “mandatory” challengers for elite fighters to fight.

Thus, 2018 is ending on a bittersweet note. There’s more boxing on television and streaming video now than ever before. But sadly, there are fewer great fights. And that’s unlikely to change in the near future. Every promoter, TV network, and sanctioning body of note has its own fiefdom (or “league,” if you will) that it’s anxious to protect to the overall detriment of the sport. If baseball were run like boxing, there wouldn’t have been a World Series this year. Instead, the Boston Red Sox would have been declared “American League World Champions,” the Los Angeles Dodgers would have been designated “National League World champions,” and baseball would be a niche sport.

Thomas Hauser’s new email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – Protect Yourself at All Times – was published by the University of Arkansas Press. In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism.

Check out more boxing news on video at The Boxing Channel

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Thomas Hauser

Thomas Hauser is the author of 52 books. In 2005, he was honored by the Boxing Writers Association of America, which bestowed the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism upon him. He was the first Internet writer ever to receive that award. In 2019, Hauser was chosen for boxing's highest honor: induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Lennox Lewis has observed, “A hundred years from now, if people want to learn about boxing in this era, they’ll read Thomas Hauser.”

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

Published

1 day ago

July 25, 2024

David A. Avila

Avila-Perspective-Chap-289-East-L.A.-A-Fight-Town-Claressa-Shields-and-More

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All that action takes place on Friday.

Elite Boxing

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

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

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

For tickets or information go to www.eliteboxingusa.com

Claressa Shields in Detroit

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

DAZN will stream the heavy-duty fight card.

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

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

Shields doesn’t lose.

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

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

Don’t get Shields mad.

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

That was a ferocious debut for both female pugilists.

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

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

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

Fights to Watch

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

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

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

Omar Trinidad photo by Lina Baker

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

Published

3 days ago

July 24, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

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

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

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

Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse

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

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

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

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Former World Bantamweight Champion Richie Sandoval Passes Away at Age 63

Published

4 days ago

July 22, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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