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Ralph `Tiger’ Jones, Conqueror of Sugar Ray Robinson, was the Ultimate Gatekeeper

Being a gatekeeper, especially in boxing, can be a lonely and underappreciated function. And in the 1950s, a golden age for the sport, that might have been especially true for a highly competent but not-quite-elite middleweight named Ralph “Tiger” Jones, who fought so often on the Gillette Cavalcade of Sports’ Friday Night Fights that he came to be known as “Mr. Television,” a sobriquet he shared with another frequent face of the relatively new medium, comedian Milton Berle.
Jones, who was 66 when he passed away on July 17, 1994, is not enshrined in the International Boxing Hall of Fame. The Brooklyn-born, Yonkers, N.Y.-based scrapper has never even appeared on the IBHOF ballot. Then again, why should he have been? His career record of 52-32-5, with only 13 victories inside the distance, isn’t particularly impressive, unless you take a closer look at the who’s who list of guys with whom he shared the ring. He holds victories over, among others, IBHOF Hall of Famers Sugar Ray Robinson, Joey Giardello and Kid Gavilan (Giardello and Gavilan each defeated him twice), and he gave such capable and even world-class fighters as Gene Fullmer (twice), Laszlo Papp, Bobo Olson, Johnny Saxton (twice), Joey Giambra (twice), Rocky Castellani (twice), Paul Pender, Johnny Bratton, Rory Calhoun (twice), Joe DeNucci (thrice), Bobby Dykes, Chico Vejar, Charlie Humez (twice), Victor Salazar, Ernie Durando and Del Flanagan all they could handle.
Given the high level of competition he so routinely faced, it is remarkable that the Tiger was stopped only once, and even that was a bit of an outlier, a one-round TKO against someone named Henry Burroughs on Jan. 13, 1951. Burroughs, who went 3-4 in an abbreviated professional career, quickly vanished from the fight scene, but for Jones, who had come in 9-0, the shocking defeat might have had the effect of instantly downgrading him from hot prospect to “opponent” and, ultimately, gatekeeper of a loaded 160-pound weight class. Interestingly, Jones had virtually toyed with Burroughs in winning a four-round unanimous decision only two months earlier.
There are those who insist that Jones’ most shining moment inside the ropes came when he stopped Dykes (career record: 120-23-8, with 57 KOs) on March 8, 1954, in Brooklyn when, well behind on points, he rallied to register two emphatic, outcome-shifting knockdowns in the 10th and final round. But even that keepsake triumph pales in comparison to what took place in Chicago Stadium on Jan. 19, 1955, when he presumably was served up as a sacrificial offering to the incomparable Sugar Ray Robinson. Sugar Ray, then 33, was in the early stages of a comeback after he failed to make it big as a tap dancer on a tour of Europe. Fighting for the first time in 2½ years, Robinson had stopped journeyman Joe Rindone in six rounds on Jan. 5, 1955, in Detroit, and the bout against Jones, an 8-1 underdog, was widely viewed as merely another step forward in the former welterweight and middleweight champion’s graduated path back to the superstar status he once held and almost everyone believed he would soon reclaim.
But the outcome that was anticipated by the in-house turnout of 7,282 and a national TV audience underwent a quick rewrite when Jones, who had lost his previous five bouts, was the aggressor in the opening stanza of the scheduled 10-rounder, which ended with the great Sugar Ray — who had come in with an incredible 132-3-2 record — bleeding from a cut to his nose. It was more of the same in round two, Jones adding to Robinson’s seepage when the living legend went back to his corner with another cut, to his right eyelid.
It should have been apparent to everyone, even then, that this was not going to be Sugar Ray’s night, and it wasn’t. Referee Frank Sikora submitted a scorecard favoring Jones by a 99-94 margin, with judges Ed Hintz and Howard Walsh seeing it as an even bigger rout for Jones, at 100-88 and 98-89. Years later, the punch-counters for CompuBox reviewed tape of the fight and determined that Tiger had connected on 232 of 407 (57 percent) to just 176 of 514 (34 percent) for Robinson.
But as is often the case when a legendary fighter is made to look something less than superhuman, the big story was not that Ralph “Tiger” Jones had won, but that a humbled Sugar Ray Robinson was now on his last legs, his nimble feet and fast hands left behind somewhere on nightclub stages in a far-away continent.
New York Journal American columnist Jimmy Cannon for all intents and purposes authored Sugar Ray’s boxing obituary in his paper’s Jan. 20 editions, opining that “There is no language spoken on the face of the earth in which you can be kind when you tell a man he is old and should stop pretending he is young … Old fighters, who go beyond the limits of their age, resent it when you tell them they’re through … what he had is gone. The pride isn’t. The gameness isn’t. The insolent faith in himself is still there … but the pride and the gameness and that insolent faith get in his way … He was marvelous, but he isn’t anymore.”
And this, from The Associated Press report of the fight: “The former welterweight and middleweight titleholder … who started his comeback after 30 months as a song-and-dance entertainer by kayoing Joe Rindone two weeks ago, was handed the worst beating of his career by Jones … Time and again Tiger drove Robinson into the ropes and mauled him pitifully.”
But as was the case with the false rumor in 1897 that novelist/humorist Samuel Clemens – better known by his pen name, Mark Twain — had passed away, any suggestion that Sugar Ray Robinson was finished as a top-tier fighter proved to be premature. The Sugar man held the middleweight championship five times in all, three of his title reigns coming after Cannon advised him in print that he was washed up.
“I never figure to win them all,” the battered Robinson said after taking his licking from Jones. “You’ve got to figure you’ll get beat somewhere along the line. I don’t want to quit. This was a test. Like my manager said, it was just too tough for a second fight on a comeback.”
And Jones?
He continued to get regular TV gigs because he was more skilled than many, doggedly determined to put on a good show and no day at the beach for any of the six world champions he fought on 10 different occasions. But he never got a shot at a world title, a cruel twist of fate for someone who not only had paid his membership dues in the school of hard knocks, but continued to pay them right up to the end, a 10-round, unanimous-decision loss to IBHOF Hall of Famer and three-time Olympic gold medalist Laszlo Papp of Hungary on March 21, 1962. Tiger was floored in three separate rounds, but true to his unyielding code of honor, he gutted it out to the final bell. His pride would not allow him to do otherwise.
As a child growing up in New Orleans and the son of police captain Jack Fernandez (career record: 4-1-1, 1 KO), a former welterweight of scant pro accomplishment whom I idolized as if he had been a world champion, it seemed to me that, if Tiger Jones didn’t appear every week on the Gillette Cavalcade of Sports, he was in the featured bout at least every month or so. The best of the gatekeepers from that glorious era deserve at least some reflected glory for hanging in with their betters, and Jones holds a special place in my recollections along with, among others, Florentino Fernandez (I liked to pretend we were somehow related), Holly Mims and “Hammerin’” Henry Hank, the Detroit middleweight and light heavyweight who fought so often in New Orleans (18 times) that I chose to believe he was almost as local as Willie Pastrano, Ralph Dupas, Percy Pugh and Jerry Pellegrini. Hank, who was 62-30-4 with 40 KOs in a career that spanned from 1953 to ’72, was a virtual replica of the never-say-die Jones, never fighting for a widely recognized world title (he did drop a 15-round decision to Eddie Cotton for the Michigan version of the light heavyweight championship) and losing just once inside the distance, on a ninth-round stoppage by Bob Foster on Dec. 11, 1964, in Norfolk, Va.
Yeah, that would be the same Bob Foster who would go on to become one of the most accomplished 175-pound champions ever and was inducted into the IBHOF in 1990.
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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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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Gabriela Fundora KOs Marilyn Badillo and Perez Upsets Conwell in Oceanside

It was just a numbers game for Gabriela Fundora and despite Mexico’s Marilyn Badillo’s elusive tactics it took the champion one punch to end the fight and retain her undisputed flyweight world title by knockout on Saturday.
Will it be her last flyweight defense?
Though Fundora (16-0, 8 KOs) fired dozens of misses, a single punch found Badillo (19-1-1, 3 KOs) and ended her undefeated career and first attempt at a world title at the Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, California.
Fundora, however, proves unbeatable at flyweight.
The champion entered the arena as the headliner for the Golden Boy Promotion show and stepped through the ropes with every physical advantage possible, including power.
Mexico’s Badillo was a midget compared to Fundora but proved to be as elusive as a butterfly in a menagerie for the first six rounds. As the six-inch taller Fundora connected on one punch for every dozen thrown, that single punch was a deadly reminder.
Badillo tried ducking low and slipping to the left while countering with slashing uppercuts, she found little success. She did find the body a solid target but the blows proved to be useless. And when Badillo clinched, that proved more erroneous as Fundora belted her rapidly during the tie-ups.
“She was kind of doing her ducking thing,” said Fundora describing Badillo’s defensive tactics. “I just put the pressure on. It was just like a train. We didn’t give her that break.”
The Mexican fighter tried valiantly with various maneuvers. None proved even slightly successful. Fundora remained poised and under control as she stalked the challenger.
In the seventh round Badillo seemed to take a stand and try to slug it out with Fundora. She quickly was lit up by rapid left crosses and down she went at 1:44 of the seventh round. The Mexican fighter’s corner wisely waved off the fight and referee Rudy Barragan stopped the fight and held the dazed Badillo upright.
Once again Fundora remained champion by knockout. The only question now is will she move up to super flyweight or bantamweight to challenge the bigger girls.
Perez Beats Conwell.
Mexico’s Jorge “Chino” Perez (33-4, 26 KOs) upset Charles Conwell (21-1, 15 KOs) to win by split decision after 12 rounds in their super welterweight showdown.
It was a match that paired two hard-hitting fighters whose ledgers brimmed with knockouts, but neither was able to score a knockdown against each other.
Neither fighter moved backward. It was full steam ahead with Conwell proving successful to the body and head with left hooks and Perez connecting with rights to the head and body. It was difficult to differentiate the winner.
Though Conwell seemed to be the superior defensive fighter and more accurate, two judges preferred Perez’s busier style. They gave the fight to Perez by 115-113 scores with the dissenter favoring Conwell by the same margin.
It was Conwell’s first pro loss. Maybe it will open doors for more opportunities.
Other Bouts
Tristan Kalkreuth (15-1) managed to pass a serious heat check by unanimous decision against former contender Felix Valera (24-8) after a 10-round back-and-forth heavyweight fight.
It was very close.
Kalkreuth is one of those fighters that possess all the physical tools including youth and size but never seems to be able to show it. Once again he edged past another foe but at least this time he faced an experienced fighter in Valera.
Valera had his moments especially in the middle of the 10-round fight but slowed down during the last three rounds.
One major asset for Kalkreuth was his chin. He got caught but still motored past the clever Valera. After 10 rounds two judges saw it 99-91 and one other judge 97-93 all for Kalkreuth.
Highly-rated prospect Ruslan Abdullaev (2-0) blasted past dangerous Jino Rodrigo (13- 5-2) in an eight round super lightweight fight. He nearly stopped the very tough Rodrigo in the last two rounds and won by unanimous decision.
Abdullaev is trained by Joel and Antonio Diaz in Indio.
Bakersfield prospect Joel Iriarte (7-0, 7 KOs) needed only 1:44 to knock out Puerto Rico’s Marcos Jimenez (25-12) in a welterweight bout.
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‘Krusher’ Kovalev Exits on a Winning Note: TKOs Artur Mann in his ‘Farewell Fight’

At his peak, former three-time world light heavyweight champion Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev ranked high on everyone’s pound-for-pound list. Now 42 years old – he turned 42 earlier this month – Kovalev has been largely inactive in recent years, but last night he returned to the ring in his hometown of Chelyabinsk, Russia, and rose to the occasion in what was billed as his farewell fight, stopping Artur Mann in the seventh frame.
Kovalev hit his peak during his first run as a world title-holder. He was 30-0-1 (26 KOs) entering first match with Andre Ward, a mark that included a 9-0 mark in world title fights. The only blemish on his record was a draw that could have been ruled a no-contest (journeyman Grover Young was unfit to continue after Kovalev knocked down in the second round what with was deemed an illegal rabbit punch). Among those nine wins were two stoppages of dangerous Haitian-Canadian campaigner Jean Pascal and a 12-round shutout over Bernard Hopkins.
Kovalev’s stature was not diminished by his loss to the undefeated Ward. All three judges had it 114-113, but the general feeling among the ringside press was that Sergey nicked it.
The rematch was also somewhat controversial. Referee Tony Weeks, who halted the match in the eighth stanza with Kovalev sitting on the lower strand of ropes, was accused of letting Ward get away with a series of low blows, including the first punch of a three-punch series of body shots that culminated in the stoppage. Sergey was wobbled by a punch to the head earlier in the round and was showing signs of fatigue, but he was still in the fight. Respected judge Steve Weisfeld had him up by three points through the completed rounds.
Sergey Kovalev was never the same after his second loss to Andre Ward, albeit he recaptured a piece of the 175-pound title twice, demolishing Vyacheslav Shabranskyy for the vacant WBO belt after Ward announced his retirement and then avenging a loss to Eleider Alvarez (TKO by 7) with a comprehensive win on points in their rematch.
Kovalev’s days as a title-holder ended on Nov. 2, 2019 when Canelo Alvarez, moving up two weight classes to pursue a title in a fourth weight division, stopped him in the 11th round, terminating what had been a relatively even fight with a hellacious left-right combination that left Krusher so discombobulated that a count was superfluous.
That fight went head-to-head with a UFC fight in New York City. DAZN, to their everlasting discredit, opted to delay the start of Canelo-Kovalev until the main event of the UFC fight was finished. The delay lasted more than an hour and Kovalev would say that he lost his psychological edge during the wait.
Kovalev had two fights in the cruiserweight class between his setback to Canelo and last night’s presumptive swan song. He outpointed Tervel Pulev in Los Angeles and lost a 10-round decision to unheralded Robin Sirwan Safar in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Artur Mann, a former world title challenger – he was stopped in three rounds by Mairis Briedis in 2021 when Briedis was recognized as the top cruiserweight in the world – was unexceptional, but the 34-year-old German, born in Kazakhstan, wasn’t chopped liver either, and Kovalev’s stoppage of him will redound well to the Russian when he becomes eligible for the Boxing Hall of Fame.
Krusher almost ended the fight in the second round. He knocked Mann down hard with a short left hand and seemingly scored another knockdown before the round was over (but it was ruled a slip). Mann barely survived the round.
In the next round, a punch left Mann with a bad cut on his right eyelid, but the German came to fight and rounds three, four and five were competitive.
Kovalev had a good sixth round although there were indications that he was tiring. But in the seventh he got a second wind and unleashed a right-left combination that rolled back the clock to the days when he was one of the sport’s most feared punchers. Mann went down hard and as he staggered to his feet, his corner signaled that the fight should be stopped and the referee complied. The official time was 0:49 of round seven. It was the 30th KO for Kovalev who advanced his record to 36-5-1.
Addendum: History informs us that Farewell Fights have a habit of becoming redundant, by which we mean that boxers often get the itch to fight again after calling it quits. Have we seen the last of Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev? We woudn’t bet on it.
The complete Kovalev-Mann fight card was live-streamed on the Boxing News youtube channel.
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