Oleksandr Gvozdyk’s Opponent Didn’t Have a Leg to Stand On

Published

6 years ago

March 31, 2019

PHILADELPHIA – It is a fairly common practice in boxing for a newly minted world champion to make his first title defense against an opponent who might be considered a bit of a soft touch, particularly if he rose to the top of his alphabet fiefdom by dethroning an especially dangerous predecessor.

If one oddsmaker is to be believed, WBC light heavyweight champ Oleksandr Gvozdyk’s first defense of the belt he lifted last Dec. 1, on an 11^th-round knockout of the long-reigning and favored Adonis Stevenson – arguably the hardest-hitting 175-pound ruler since Michael Moorer, or maybe even all the way back to Bob Foster – was easier than most such ritualistic demonstrations of superiority. So dismissive was one sports book linemaker of Doudou Ngumbu’s chances against Gvozdyk that the champion opened as an -8000 wagering choice, meaning a bettor would have to put up $8,000 on the 31-year-old Ukrainian in order to win $100. The message sent by such an absurdly wide line was clear: as an aspirant to displace Gvozdyk, Doudou, a native of the Democratic Republic of Congo now living in France, was, well, more like doo-doo.

It would be unfair to Ngumbu (38-9, 14 KOs), who at 37 was getting his first, and undoubtedly last, shot at a bejeweled belt, to point out that his official fifth-round technical-knockout loss, at the sold-out 2300 Arena here, came about without a punch being landed by Gvozdyk (17-0, 14 KOs), whose victory was all but assured from the moment contracts were signed. To his credit, Ngumbu was trying his darndest to cash that lottery ticket, although his darndest never was going to be good enough to pull off an upset twice as unlikely as Buster Douglas over Mike Tyson. But when Ngumbu, his face contorted in pain, began hopping around on his left (good) leg, what was already a long and weird night became stranger still.

Referee Eric Dali appeared to be momentarily flummoxed by Ngumbu’s impersonation of a one-legged Easter bunny. Dali first called time to allow the challenger time to recover, ruling an accidental foul had occurred, even though Ngumbu’s distress had not been caused by a punch from Gvozdyk, legal or otherwise. What followed was a scene straight out of the fight game’s theater of the absurd, with Dali, Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission executive director Greg Sirb, the ring physician and members of Ngumbu’s corner team, none of whom apparently spoke English, bunching up on the ring apron to decide what determination needed to be made.

It finally was decided that Ngumbu had suffered a torn Achilles tendon, an injury more serious than a cramp or pulled calf muscle, which would have been bad enough. Gvozdyk, a bronze medalist at the 2012 London Olympics, was awarded a less-than-satisfying win by stoppage, after an elapsed time of 58 seconds.

“(Gvozdyk) didn’t even hit him,” Sirb noted. “That’s a cheap KO. There was no foul. (Ngumbu) was trying to avoid a punch, and he obviously hurt himself trying to twist away. He wound up tearing his Achilles tendon. That’s nasty. You could see it. He couldn’t put any pressure on his right leg.”

For Gvozdyk, whose celebration of the take-down of Stevenson was muted when the stricken champion had to be rushed to a nearby hospital where he underwent surgery for two brain bleeds and was placed in an induced coma (Stevenson is, thankfully, recovering, but his boxing career is over), another ending to a winning fight ended in an unexpected manner.

“I’m satisfied I won. I keep my title,” he said in his dressing room, apparently unaware of the extent or legitimacy of Ngumbu’s injury. “How it happened, I’m definitely not satisfied with. Probably the people who came are not happy. It’s important to make your fans happy. I tried to do my best in this fight. What happened was not my fault. I guess the guy just came to get a paycheck. I don’t know. I don’t want to insult him.

“Maybe something happened. I don’t know. I don’t feel I hurt him. For a second time something screwed up my celebration. I really thought the fight would go longer and be more exciting. I was just starting to accelerate.”

For numbers-crunchers interested in such things, Gvozdyk landed 47 of 204 punches (23 percent) to just 18 of 108 (17 percent) for Ngumbu, who went in as the WBC’s eighth-rated light heavyweight contender. But while winning and losing is always of paramount consideration, how either outcome is achieved also matters, and Gvozdyk did not win with the flourish he and his many supporters in the standing-room-only crowd of 1,350 or so had anticipated. That opened the door for a couple of snide remarks from at least one interested onlooker.

Philadelphia’s Jesse Hart, a two-time world title challenger as a super middleweight who is planning to move up to light heavyweight, is a member of the Top Rank promotional stable, as is Gvozdyk, and he said he could and would eventually capitalize on the openings he saw against the champion that the limited Ngumbu was unable to.

“(Gvozdyk) fought down to the kid’s level,” Hart said, although, at 37, few would characterize Ngumbu as a kid at this late stage of his career. “He should have gotten him out of there within the first four rounds.”

Nor was the ESPN-televised lead-in to the main event — Philly welterweight “The New” Ray Robinson (24-3-1, 12 KOs) vs. Egidijus Kavaliauskas (21-0-1, 17 KOs), a Ukrainian now fighting out of Oxnard, Calif. — particularly compelling, although it did provide a symposium for debate on the vicissitudes of how to score a boxing match. One judge’s scorecard had Robinson winning by 97-93, while the other two saw the fight as a 95-95 standoff – a majority draw.

For those who place a high value on slick boxing technique, the mobile, jab-flicking Robinson deserved a clear-cut victory. One ringside writer had him winning nine of the 10 rounds. ESPN boxing writer Dan Rafael went way over to the other side, giving nine rounds to the continually stalking Kavaliauskas, a -1800 favorite.

Despite the fact that seven of the 11 bouts on the card ended inside the distance, three of which were one-round quickies, fans who came early and stayed late must have felt like they had attended a double-feature at their local movie theater, with Dr. Zhivago followed by Lawrence of Arabia, with a half-hour intermission in between. With the first bout getting underway at 5:30 p.m. EDT, and Gvozdyk-Ngumbu wrapping up near midnight, the 6½-hour marathon tested the endurance, and possibly the bladder capacities of fans who helped pass the time with multiple trips to the beer concession stand.

The audience, reflecting the global lineup of fighters, was a blend of many nationalities and cultures. Including those representatives who pledged allegiance to two flags – like Ngumbu, who was born in the Congo and became a naturalized French citizen – countries represented were Ukraine, Mexico, Malaysia, Uzbekistan, Japan, Canada, Cameroon, Ghana, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, France, Congo, Guatemala and Puerto Rico, although the last is technically an unincorporated territory of the United States. The loudest contingent appeared to be Ukrainians and Ukrainian-Americans, not surprising in that 20,000 or so such residents of the U.S. can be found in the Eastern seaboard corridor from metropolitan New York to Philadelphia and many are rabid boxing buffs. From the first round on, Gvozdyk backers shouted “Gvozdyk! Gvozdyk!,” which for the phonetically challenged sounds very much like Vod-zik. By decibel level, the Ukrainians seemed more plentiful and louder than Philly patrons, who made themselves known with their off-key renditions of “Fly, Eagles, Fly,” the local NFL team’s fight song.

In other action:

*Kudratillo Abdukakhorov (16-0, 9 KOs) of Malaysia by way of his native Uzbekistan scored a unanimous, 12-round decision over Japan’s Keita Obara (20-4-1, 18 KOs) in an IBF welterweight elimination bout.

*Super middleweight Christian Mbilli (14-0, 13 KOs), from Montreal by way of his native Cameroon, saw his knockout streak ended as he settled for an eight-round, unanimous decision over Mexico’s Humberto Gutierrez (33-8-2, 18 KOs).

*Juan Ruiz (22-4, 14 KOs) of Mexico came away with a fourth-round TKO victory over Ghana’s Fredrick Lawson (27-2, 21 KOs) in their scheduled eight-round super welterweight bout.

*Super featherweight Joshafat Ortiz (6-0, 4 KOs), a Puerto Rican based in Reading, Pa., needed just one of the six scheduled rounds to put away James Thomas (6-5, 6 KOs), of Grand Rapids, Mich.

*Popular Philadelphia heavyweight Sonny Conto (2-0, 2 KOs), a recent addition to the Top Rank lineup, bombed out Omar Acosta (1-6, 1 KO) of Hereford, Texas, in one round and will next be seen on June 15 in Las Vegas on the undercard of a show headlined by Tyson Fury against Tom Schwarz.

*Jeremy Adorno, a lanky super bantamweight from Allentown, Pa., by way of Puerto Rico, made his pro debut by pitching a four-round shutout at Sebastian Baltazar (1-4), from Tacoma, Wash., by way of his native Guatemala.

*Super featherweight Donald Smith (9-0, 6 KO), a southpaw from Philly, seemed headed to a four-round unanimous decision over Jose Antonio Martinez (11-18, 6 KOs) when he turned out the lights on the Mexican, now residing in Albequerque, N.M., with an overhand left late in the final round.

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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TSS Salutes Thomas Hauser and his Bernie Award Cohorts

Published

1 day 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

2 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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Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis Wins Welterweight Showdown in Atlantic City

Published

5 days ago

April 12, 2025

David A. Avila

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In the showdown between undefeated welterweight champions Jaron “Boots Ennis walked away with the victory by technical knockout over Eamantis Stanionis and the WBA and IBF titles on Saturday.

No doubt. Ennis was the superior fighter.

“He’s a great fighter. He’s a good guy,” said Ennis.

Philadelphia’s Ennis (34-0, 30 KOs) faced Lithuania’s Stanionis (15-1, 10 KOs) at demonstrated an overpowering southpaw and orthodox attack in front of a sold-out crowd at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

It might have been confusing but whether he was in a southpaw stance or not Ennis busted the body with power shots and jabbed away in a withering pace in the first two rounds.

Stanionis looked surprised when his counter shots seemed impotent.

In the third round the Lithuanian fighter who trains at the Wild Card Gym in Hollywood, began using a rocket jab to gain some semblance of control. Then he launched lead rights to the jaw of Ennis. Though Stanionis connected solidly, the Philly fighter was still standing and seemingly unfazed by the blows.

That was a bad sign for Stanionis.

Ennis returned to his lightning jabs and blows to the body and Stanionis continued his marauding style like a Sherman Tank looking to eventually run over his foe. He just couldn’t muster enough firepower.

In the fifth round Stanionis opened up with a powerful body attack and seemed to have Ennis in retreat. But the Philadelphia fighter opened up with a speedy combination that ended with blood dripping from the nose of Stanionis.

It was not looking optimistic for the Lithuanian fighter who had never lost.

Stanionis opened up the sixth round with a three-punch combination and Ennis met him with a combination of his own. Stanionis was suddenly in retreat and Ennis chased him like a leopard pouncing on prey. A lightning five-punch combination that included four consecutive uppercuts delivered Stanionis to the floor for the count. He got up and survived the rest of the round.

After returning shakily to his corner, the trainer whispered to him and then told the referee that they had surrendered.

Ennis jumped in happiness and now holds the WBA and IBF welterweight titles.

“I felt like I was getting in my groove. I had a dream I got a stoppage just like this,” said Ennis.

Stanionis looked like he could continue, but perhaps it was a wise move by his trainer. The Lithuanian fighter’s wife is expecting their first child at any moment.

Meanwhile, Ennis finally proved the expectations of greatness by experts. It was a thorough display of superiority over a very good champion.

“The biggest part was being myself and having a live body in front of me,” said Ennis. “I’m just getting started.”

Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn was jubilant over the performance of the Philadelphia fighter.

“What a wonderful humble man. This is one of the finest fighters today. By far the best fighter in the division,” said Hearn. “You are witnessing true greatness.”

Other Bouts

Former featherweight world champion Raymond Ford (17-1-1, 8 KOs) showed that moving up in weight would not be a problem even against the rugged and taller Thomas Mattice (22-5-1, 17 KOs) in winning by a convincing unanimous decision.

The quicksilver southpaw Ford ravaged Mattice in the first round then basically cruised the remaining nine rounds like a jackhammer set on automatic. Four-punch combinations pummeled Mattice but never put him down.

“He was a smart veteran. He could take a hit,” said Ford.

Still, there was no doubt on who won the super featherweight contest. After 10 rounds all three judges gave Ford every round and scored it 100-90 for the New Jersey fighter who formerly held the WBA featherweight title which was wrested from him by Nick Ball.

Shakhram Giyasov (17-0, 10 KOs) made good on a promise to his departed daughter by knocking out Argentina’s Franco Ocampo (17-3, 8 KOs) in their welterweight battle.

Giyasov floored Ocampo in the first round with an overhand right but the Argentine fighter was able to recover and fight on for several more rounds.

In the fourth frame, Giyasov launched a lead right to the liver and collapsed Ocampo with the body shot for the count of 10 at 1:57 of the fourth round.

“I had a very hard camp because I lost my daughter,” Giyasov explained. “I promised I would be world champion.”

In his second pro fight Omari Jones (2-0) needed only seconds to disable William Jackson (13-6-2) with a counter right to the body for a knockout win. The former Olympic medalist was looking for rounds but reacted to his opponent’s actions.

“He was a veteran he came out strong,” said Jones who won a bronze medal in the 2024 Paris Olympics. “But I just stayed tight and I looked for the shot and I landed it.”

After a feint, Jackson attacked and was countered by a right to the rib cage and down he went for the count at 1:40 of the first round in the welterweight contest.

Photo credit: Matchroom

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