25 Years Gone, This Old Welterweight is Still a Champion in My Eyes

Published

6 years ago

March 4, 2019

I never saw my favorite fighter in action. His last professional fight took place before I was born. There are no videotapes of him boring in, springing from a crouch and landing his trademark left hook. All that remains of his boxing legacy are a few yellowed newspaper clippings, the memories of a diminishing number of elderly friends and family members and, oh, yes, a framed poster from Aug. 18, 1944, that lists his name as an undercard performer for a show headlined by the great Archie Moore. The Mongoose fought Jimmie Hayden; my favorite fighter fought Jimmy Hatmaker.

By all accounts, Bernard “Jack” Fernandez Sr. – whose nickname was conferred by someone long, long ago because his boxing style supposedly was reminiscent of Jack Dempsey’s – was no one’s idea of a great fighter. Boxing did not bring him wealth and fame, only a few trophies from his amateur days in New Orleans and a love of the sport he passed on to his only son. But the old clippings, and the enthusiastic recollections of those who saw him fight, are enough to make me think that he must have been entertaining to watch. The word – confirmed by the somewhat unnatural configuration of his nose and ears – is that my favorite fighter, a scrappy welterweight, always gave as good as he got. Those who knew him then enthusiastically told me of his willingness to take one – or two, or three – to connect with one of his own.

One clipping, previewing Archie Moore’s 10-round main event with Amado Rodriguez in San Diego, described my favorite fighter thusly: “The opener matches Jack Fernandez, a wild-hooking slugger, against a good shock absorber, Mike Pacheco.”

Another, in the New Orleans States-Item, was a personal note from Art Burke, a fellow New Orleanian who later served as the newspaper’s executive sports editor, to then-sports editor Harry Martinez, who reprinted the letter in his column.

“We had a monthly `smoker’ here at the gymnasium Wednesday night (which opened with the returns of the Joe Louis-Billy Conn fight) and one of our New Orleans Reservists, Jack Fernandez, fought on the eight-bout boxing program and scored the only clear-cut knockout of the night,” Burke, a member of the U.S. Naval Reserves then serving in San Diego as was my father, wrote to Martinez. “You may remember this boy since he reached the semifinals of the Sugar Bowl boxing tournament in 1940. His victory was all the more thrilling by the fact that the boy he kayoed in the second round was Utah state 145-pound boxing champion for three straight years and had not been knocked out in 75 fights.”

It was my dad who taught me how to defend myself – and was called to the principal’s office at St. Stephen School when, as a second-grader, I dispatched a would-be bully with, you guessed it, a left hook. Obviously, the nuns there had not seen Ingrid Bergman’s reel-life portrayal of Sister Benedict in The Bells of St. Mary’s. The real-life Sister Marie’s preferred remedy for left-hooking second-graders: detention for life, and lots of knuckle-rapping with rulers.

It was my dad who, when he wasn’t pulling a night shift, sat with me and explained what was going on during telecasts of the Gillette Cavalcade of Sports. The only fifth-grader at St. Stephen who idolized Carmen Basilio as my classmates did, say, Mickey Mantle, there were many nights when I went to sleep with Don Dunphy’s voice in my head.

It was my dad who took me to amateur cards at St. Mary’s Italian gym, where world champions Ralph Dupas and Willie Pastrano (later trained by Angelo Dundee) first learned boxing from the venerable Whitey Esneault.

It was my dad who took me to pro shows at Municipal Auditorium to see the likes of New Orleans-born lightweight champion Joe “Old Bones” Brown and “Hammerin’” Henry Hank, a middleweight from Detroit who fought so often for promoter Louie Messina I believed he, too, was local.

It was my dad who was buttons-popping proud when I succeeded Elmer Smith on the Daily News boxing beat in October 1987.

For nearly seven years, my dad was my primary sounding board. He saw on TV most of the fights I covered and, those few he didn’t, I sent tapes for his review. He’d make observations, again giving me the benefit of his wisdom and insight. We’d speak at least once a week, and the conversation often turned to boxing. It was not nearly our only common bond, but it was a shared passion.

Once, when my dad was in town for a visit, I took him to the Blue Horizon, where he was introduced to America’s most knowledgable boxing crowd by ring announcer Ed Derian. I also took him to Las Vegas, for the rematch between Mike Tyson and Razor Ruddock, and to London, where his most lasting memory was not of the fight he had come to see, in which Lennox Lewis knocked out Ruddock, but of a one-hour coffee-shop sitdown with Dundee, with whom he spent more time discussing Dupas and Pastrano than Angelo’s more famous pupils, Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard.

Dad always thanked me for providing him a re-entry of sorts into a long-closed chapter of his life, but no trips I arranged to glitzy arenas could ever repay the debt I owed. It wasn’t just boxing he taught me; it is said that that an honest man’s pillow is his peace of mind, and my father, who retired as a much-decorated New Orleans police captain in 1972, never spent a conflicted night.

My dad passed away on March 4, 1994, after suffering a heart attack. He was 74. I flew to New Orleans and made it in time to be with him in what proved to be the final hour of his life. The fighter in him, I’m convinced, wouldn’t allow him to take the 10-count until I arrived.

When I came onto this beat, I hoped that someday I would be fortunate enough to win the Nat Fleischer Memorial Award, a lifetime achievement award conferred by the Boxing Writers Association of America. I could envision my dad sitting at my table, smiling, living a championship of sorts through me.

On Friday night, I will receive the Fleischer in New York. My wife, mother and three of my four children will be there for the high point of my newspaper career. So, too, will several of my friends.

My favorite fighter also will be there. Oh, it’s not quite in the manner in which I had envisioned, but he’ll be there. The empty seat at our table won’t really be empty. Those who love you never really leave, and the old left hooker has never left me. Not then, not now, not ever.

Yo, Dad, we did it.

Postscript: There have been other moments in my life, and in the lives of those who were fortunate enough to know my father, for which I wish he could have been there. Although all my adult children are old enough to have known and loved him, the same can’t be said of his six great-grandchildren who can’t truly relate to the verbal history of our family as it pertains to a patriarch who left this world before they arrived in it. But it is not only the lives of the rich, famous or much-accomplished that deserve to be remembered and commemorated. A recent obituary in my former newspaper, the Philadelphia Daily News, paid tribute to an unsung hero who had just passed away at 76, Jim Nicholson, who for many years wrote touching, informative and surprisingly personal obituaries about regular people who at first glance might seem to have led ordinary, mundane existences. But everyone has a story to tell, Jim reasoned, and everyone has something about them that is special and worthy of recognition. Jim made an art form of obituary writing. I wish he could have authored a piece about the old left-hooker which would have allowed readers to know him as I did. Jack Fernandez might not have been a world champion boxer, but he was a world champion human being and role model. I thank TSS readers for allowing me this opportunity to let you know a little about who and what he was, and the legacy he created that I strive every day, not always successfully, to live up to.

Editor’s Note: The original version of this story appeared 20 years ago this week in the April 6, 1999, editions of the Philadelphia Daily News.

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. 322: Super Welter Week in SoCal

Published

11 hours ago

April 18, 2025

David A. Avila

Avila-Perspective-Chap-322-Super-Welter-Week-in-SoCal

Two below-the-radar super welterweight stars show off their skills this weekend from different parts of Southern California.

One in particular, Charles Conwell, co-headlines a show in Oceanside against a hard-hitting Mexican while another super welter star Sadriddin Akhmedov faces another Mexican hitter in Commerce.

Take your pick.

The super welterweight division is loaded with talent at the moment. If Terence Crawford remained in the division he would be at the top of the class, but he is moving up several weight divisions.

Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) faces Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs) a tall knockout puncher from Los Mochis at the Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, Calif. on Saturday April 19. DAZN will stream the Golden Boy Promotions card that also features undisputed flyweight champion Gabriela Fundora. We’ll get to her later.

Conwell might be the best super welterweight out there aside from the big dogs like Vergil Ortiz, Serhii Bohachuk and Sebastian Fundora.

If you are not familiar with Conwell he comes from Cleveland, Ohio and is one of those fighters that other fighters know about. He is good.

He has the James “Lights Out” Toney kind of in-your-face-style where he anchors down and slowly deciphers the opponent’s tools and then takes them away piece by piece. Usually it’s systematic destruction. The kind you see when a skyscraper goes down floor by floor until it’s smoking rubble.

During the Covid days Conwell fought two highly touted undefeated super welters in Wendy Toussaint and Madiyar Ashkeyev. He stopped them both and suddenly was the boogie man of the super welterweight division.

Conwell will be facing Mexico’s taller Garcia who likes to trade blows as most Mexican fighters prefer, especially those from Sinaloa. These guys will be firing H bombs early.

Fundora

Co-headlining the Golden Boy card is Gabriela Fundora (15-0, 7 KOs) the undisputed flyweight champion of the world. She has all the belts and Mexico’s Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1, 3 KOs) wants them.

Gabriela Fundora is the sister of Sebastian Fundora who holds the men’s WBC and WBO super welterweight world titles. Both are tall southpaws with power in each hand to protect the belts they accumulated.

Six months ago, Fundora met Argentina’s Gabriela Alaniz in Las Vegas to determine the undisputed flyweight champion. The much shorter Alaniz tried valiantly to scrap with Fundora and ran into a couple of rocket left hands.

Mexico’s Badillo is an undefeated flyweight from Mexico City who has battled against fellow Mexicans for years. She has fought one world champion in Asley Gonzalez the current super flyweight world titlist. They met years ago with Badillo coming out on top.

Does Badillo have the skill to deal with the taller and hard-hitting Fundora?

When a fighter has a six-inch height advantage like Fundora, it is almost impossible to out-maneuver especially in two-minute rounds. Ask Alaniz who was nearly decapitated when she tried.

This will be Badillo’s first pro fight outside of Mexico.

Commerce Casino

Kazakhstan’s Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0, 13 KOs) is another dangerous punching super welterweight headlining a 360 Promotions card against Mexico’s Elias Espadas (23-6, 16 KOs) on Saturday at the Commerce Casino.

UFC Fight Pass will stream the 360 Promotions card of about eight bouts.

Akhmedov is another Kazakh puncher similar to the great Gennady “GGG” Golovkin who terrorized the middleweight division for a decade. He doesn’t have the same polish or dexterity but doesn’t lack pure punching power.

It’s another test for the super welterweight who is looking to move up the ladder in the very crowded 154-pound weight division. 360 Promotions already has a top contender in Ukraine’s Serhii Bohachuk who nearly defeated Vergil Ortiz a year ago.

Could Bohachuk and Akhmedov fight each other if nothing else materializes?

That’s a question for another day.

Fights to Watch

Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. Charles Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) vs. Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs); Gabriela Fundora (15-0) vs Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1).

Sat. UFC Fight Pass 6 p.m. Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0) vs Elias Espadas (23-6).

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TSS Salutes Thomas Hauser and his Bernie Award Cohorts

Published

3 days ago

April 16, 2025

TSS Press

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The Boxing Writers Association of America has announced the winners of its annual Bernie Awards competition. The awards, named in honor of former five-time BWAA president and frequent TSS contributor Bernard Fernandez, recognize outstanding writing in six categories as represented by stories published the previous year.

Over the years, this venerable website has produced a host of Bernie Award winners. In 2024, Thomas Hauser kept the tradition alive. A story by Hauser that appeared in these pages finished first in the category “Boxing News Story.” Titled “Ryan Garcia and the New York State Athletic Commission,” the story was published on June 23. You can read it HERE.

Hauser also finished first in the category of “Investigative Reporting” for “The Death of Ardi Ndembo,” a story that ran in the (London) Guardian. (Note: Hauser has owned this category. This is his 11^th first place finish for “Investigative Reporting”.)

Thomas Hauser, who entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the class of 2019, was honored at last year’s BWAA awards dinner with the A.J. Leibling Award for Outstanding Boxing Writing. The list of previous winners includes such noted authors as W.C. Heinz, Budd Schulberg, Pete Hamill, and George Plimpton, to name just a few.

The Leibling Award is now issued intermittently. The most recent honorees prior to Hauser were Joyce Carol Oates (2015) and Randy Roberts (2019).

Roberts, a Distinguished Professor of History at Purdue University, was tabbed to write the Hauser/Leibling Award story for the glossy magazine for BWAA members published in conjunction with the organization’s annual banquet. Regarding Hauser’s most well-known book, his Muhammad Ali biography, Roberts wrote, “It is nearly impossible to overestimate the importance of the book to our understanding of Ali and his times.” An earlier book by Hauser, “The Black Lights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing,” garnered this accolade: “Anyone who wants to understand boxing today should begin by reading ‘The Black Lights’.”

A panel of six judges determined the Bernie Award winners for stories published in 2024. The stories they evaluated were stripped of their bylines and other identifying marks including the publication or website for which the story was written.

Other winners:

Boxing Event Coverage: Tris Dixon

Boxing Column: Kieran Mulvaney

Boxing Feature (Over 1,500 Words): Lance Pugmire

Boxing Feature (Under 1,500 Words): Chris Mannix

The Dixon, Mulvaney, and Pugmire stories appeared in Boxing Scene; the Mannix story in Sports Illustrated.

The Bernie Award recipients will be honored at the forthcoming BWAA dinner on April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in the heart of Times Square. (For more information, visit the BWAA website). Two days after the dinner, an historic boxing tripleheader will be held in Times Square, the logistics of which should be quite interesting. Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney, and Teofimo Lopez share top billing.

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Mekhrubon Sanginov, whose Heroism Nearly Proved Fatal, Returns on Saturday

Published

3 days ago

April 15, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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To say that Mekhrubon Sanginov is excited to resume his boxing career would be a great understatement. Sanginov, ranked #9 by the WBA at 154 pounds before his hiatus, last fought on July 8, 2022.

He was in great form before his extended leave, having scored four straight fast knockouts, advancing his record to 13-0-1. Had he remained in Las Vegas, where he had settled after his fifth pro fight, his career may have continued on an upward trajectory, but a trip to his hometown of Dushanbe, Tajikistan, turned everything haywire. A run-in with a knife-wielding bully nearly cost him his life, stalling his career for nearly three full years.

Sanginov was exiting a restaurant in Dushanbe when he saw a man, plainly intoxicated, harassing another man, an innocent bystander. Mekhrubon intervened and was stabbed several times with a long knife. One of the puncture wounds came perilously close to puncturing his heart.

“After he stabbed me, I ran after him and hit him and caught him to hold for the police,” recollects Sanginov. “There was a lot of confusion when the police arrived. At first, the police were not certain what had happened.

“By the time I got to the hospital, I had lost two liters of blood, or so I was told. After I was patched up, one of the surgeons said to me, ‘Give thanks to God because he gave you a second life.’ It is like I was born a second time.”

“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have happened in any city,” he adds. (A story about the incident on another boxing site elicited this comment from a reader: “Good man right there. World would be a better place if more folk were willing to step up when it counts.”)

Sanginov first laced on a pair of gloves at age 10 and was purportedly 105-14 as an amateur. Growing up, the boxer he most admired was Roberto Duran. “Muhammad Ali will always be the greatest and [Marvin] Hagler was great too, but Duran was always my favorite,” he says.

During his absence from the ring, Sanginov married a girl from Tajikistan and became a father. His son Makhmud was born in Las Vegas and has dual citizenship. “Ideally,” he says, “I would like to have three more children. Two more boys and the last one a daughter.”

He also put on a great deal of weight. When he returned to the gym, his trainer Bones Adams was looking at a cruiserweight. But gradually the weight came off – “I had to give up one of my hobbies; I love to eat,” he says – and he will be resuming his career at 154. “Although I am the same weight as before, I feel stronger now. Before I was more of a boy, now I am a full-grown man,” says Sanginov who turned 29 in February.

He has a lot of rust to shed. Because of all those early knockouts, he has answered the bell for only eight rounds in the last four years. Concordantly, his comeback fight on Saturday could be described as a soft re-awakening. Sanginov’s opponent Mahonri Montes, an 18-year pro from Mexico, has a decent record (36-10-2, 25 KOs) but has been relatively inactive and is only 1-3-1 in his last five. Their match at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, California, is slated for eight rounds.

On May 10, Ardreal Holmes (17-0) faces Erickson Lubin (26-2) on a ProBox card in Kissimmee, Florida. It’s an IBF super welterweight title eliminator, meaning that the winner (in theory) will proceed directly to a world title fight.

Sanginov will be watching closely. He and Holmes were scheduled to meet in March of 2022 in the main event of a ShoBox card on Showtime. That match fell out when Sanginov suffered an ankle injury in sparring.

If not for a twist of fate, that may have been Mekhrubon Sanginov in that IBF eliminator, rather than Ardreal Holmes. We will never know, but one thing we do know is that Mekhrubon’s world title aspirations were too strong to be ruined by a knife-wielding bully.

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