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Three Sons of Pro Fighters Poised to Pursue Their NFL Dreams
Maybe, if former heavyweight David Long Sr. and former middleweight Sanderline Williams had become highly paid and celebrated world champions, their sons would have chosen to follow in their fighting fathers’ footsteps. Then again, perhaps not. Look at what the great Evander Holyfield accomplished in boxing, but still his athletically gifted son preferred to make his mark in another sport that also requires its participants to hit and be hit.
The NFL draft is a frenzied, three-day meat market in which 32 league-member teams, after analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of hundreds of draft-eligible college players, make their selections in rounds one through seven, hoping that at least a couple of their rookie additions improve their rosters and thus their chances at going to the Super Bowl. And if the 254 drafted players aren’t enough to provide just the right youthful infusion of talent, there’s also a glut of undrafted free agents to be signed, with the same goal in mind.
No less impressive than the painstakingly thorough work of NFL scouts and front offices is that of ESPN and the NFL Network, which every year somehow manage to put together video highlights of every drafted player, even those who played at small colleges and whose games never make it onto anyone’s television screen. In showing those clips, the TV talking heads at the draft, which this year was staged in Nashville, Tenn., also have anecdotes and informational tidbits to pass along to viewers.
Thus were NFL draft junkies – of which I confess to be one – alerted to the sizes, statistics and stories of Dre’Mont Jones and David Long Jr., draftees who might or might not go on to pro football stardom with their new teams. And you can bet a lot more attention would have been devoted to Elijah Holyfield, a potential draftee who wasn’t one of the chosen 254 but shortly thereafter signed a free-agent contract. Elijah’s lineage is certain to be a hot topic when he reports to training camp with the Carolina Panthers this summer.
Given his higher draft position and the elite status of the college program for which he played – the Ohio State defensive end was taken in the third round, No. 71 overall, by the Denver Broncos – Jones likely will get a longer look in camp than either Long, a linebacker for the West Virginia Mountaineers who went to the Tennessee Titans in the sixth round, No. 188 overall, or Holyfield, the former Georgia running back whose legendary father won’t be of much assistance if his kid doesn’t show enough in camp to convince his coaches he’s NFL material.
Stats? Here they are for Jones, a 6-foot-3, 281-pounder who put together some commendable numbers during his junior season with the Buckeyes: in 14 games, he totaled 8½ sacks, 13 tackles for loss, three fumble recoveries, one forced fumble, one defensive touchdown scored and one interception. His pre-draft analysis describes him as “an undersized defensive tackle with above-average length and a quick first step. He’s a disruptive one-gap run-defender. He has heavy hands and flashes some violence with his initial punch rushing the passer.”
That “violence with his initial punch” bit might come from his father, Sanderline Williams, who was a pretty good middleweight from Cleveland until he began mixing it up with the division’s top performers. Williams, now 61, posted a 24-15-1 record with 14 knockouts, but at one point he was 22-4 with those 14 wins inside the distance. It’s hard to fault someone, though, for failing to maintain career momentum when you consider that he twice fought James Toney (earning a draw in their first matchup) as well as single bouts with Gerald McClellan, Reggie Johnson, Nigel Benn and Iran Barkley, all of whom at one point were, like Toney, world champions. Oh, one more thing to be considered: despite sharing the ring with a Murderer’s Row of opponents, Williams was stopped just once, by Lindell Holmes, in the ninth round of a scheduled 10-rounder on June 29, 1985.
It stands to reason that his pop taught Dre’Mont some boxing moves, if only to better protect himself on the street as the occasion warranted. But even if pro football doesn’t work out for the first-team All-Big Ten player and he eventually tries his hand at boxing, it almost certainly won’t be at Williams’ old weight class. Jones would have to shed 121 pounds to get down to middleweight, a slimming-down which, if nothing else, might net him a commercial for Nutrisystem.
David Long Jr., at 5-11¼ and 227 pounds, is already a virtual clone of his heavyweight father, but a bit on the smallish side for an NFL linebacker. His pre-draft analysis lists him as “an undersized linebacker with below-average length and top-end speed. He’s an instinctive run defender who fills gaps and sifts through traffic between the tackles. He masks below-average speed by reading the play quickly and chasing with great effort.”
The elder Long, now 47, never went as far in the fight game as did Sanderline Williams, but he did post a 12-5-2 record with eight KOs as a pro. The Cincinnati native also has the distinction of sharing the ring with future WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder, who starched him in one round on Nov. 26, 2011. But at first glance that bout did not appear to be the total mismatch that the outcome suggested. Although Wilder came in at 19-0, all of the wins in abbreviated fashion, Long Sr., who weighed 228 pounds to Wilder’s 215½, was a respectable 11-1-2 (7) at the time.
It was a given that Elijah Holyfield would be picked in the later rounds of the draft, if at all, after he ran the 40-yard dash in an abysmal (for a running back) 4.78 seconds at the NFL combine. But the 5-10, 217-pounder had a very productive junior season in the ultracompetitive Southeastern Conference, rushing for 1,018 yards and scoring seven touchdowns for Georgia despite splitting time with second-team All-SEC choice D’Andre Swift, a sophomore who rushed for 1,049 yards and scored 10 TDs. The pre-draft analysis on Elijah Holyfield notes that he “possesses good size and strength, but did not perform well at the combine except for the bench press (26 reps of 225 pounds). He’s a patient runner with strong leg drive, runs behind his pads and almost always falls forward at the end of runs. He lacks elite, make-you-miss suddenness, but shows good stop-start ability and has enough lateral ability to weave in and out of creases. He is more quick than fast and lacks a second gear when he hits daylight.”
Given the fact that Elijah Holyfield boxed until he was 13 and showed some promise, it wouldn’t be a shocker if he ever got around to trying his hand at the sport that made his dad rich and famous. But, ironically, it is the son who lived the dream that his father first had as a young boy growing up in Atlanta as a huge fan of the Georgia Bulldogs and the NFL Atlanta Falcons.
“Wasn’t nothing I wanted more than to play for that team (Georgia),” Evander hold me in August 2015, for a story I did on the highly recruited Elijah, the eighth of Evander’s 11 children by several women. “Herschel Walker had won the Heisman Trophy for Georgia (in 1982). It was my dream to be another Herschel Walker, and then to play for the Falcons and be another Dave Hampton.”
But while it isn’t easy to be successful in pro football, there is at least one voice from beyond the grave that says that making it at the highest levels of boxing is even more difficult.
“Athletically, boxing is the toughest profession in the world,” the late, great trainer Angelo Dundee once told me. “Just because you’re big and strong and great in football has nothing to do with it. I’ve seen it many times over the years, football players walking into gyms, asking me to train them into boxers. It never works. The qualities that a boxer has to have to be really good are different than in any other sport.”
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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Fighting on His Home Turf, Galal Yafai Pulverizes Sunny Edwards
The Resorts World Arena in Birmingham, England, was the site of tonight’s Matchroom Promotions card featuring flyweights Galal Yafai and Sunny Edwards in the main event. Yafai went to post a short underdog in what on paper was a 50/50 fight, but it was a rout from the start.
Yafai got right into Edwards’ grill in the opening round and never let up. Although there were no knockdowns, it was complete domination by the Birmingham southpaw until the referee stepped in and waived it off at the 1:10 mark of round six.
“Bloodline” was the tagline of the match-up. Sunny’s brother Charlie Edwards, now competing as a bantamweight, is a former flyweight world title-holder. Galal, a gold medalist at the Tokyo Olympics, is the third member of his family to make his mark as a prizefighter. Brother Kal, also a former Olympian, once held a world title at 115 and brother Gamal was a Commonwealth champion as a bantamweight.
Edwards and Galal Yafai were well-acquainted. They had fought as amateurs and had shared the ring on many occasions as sparring partners. Although Galal was 31 years old, he had only eight pro fights under his belt and was meeting a veteran of six world title fights whose only loss in 22 starts came the hands of the brilliant Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez.
But that loss to Rodriguez in Arizona (Edwards’ corner pulled him out after nine frames) was of the kind that shortens careers. Although Sunny won a tune-up fight since that setback, tonight he had the appearance of a boxer who had grown old overnight. In fact, after the second round, he was heard saying to his corner “I really don’t want to be here.”
Edwards wanted out, but he dutifully answered the bell for the next four rounds. After the bout, he indicated that he had planned to retire after this fight, win, or lose, or draw.
The contest was billed as a WBC “eliminator” which positions Galal Yafai (9-0, 7 KOs) for a match with Japanese veteran Kenshiro Teraji, the long-reigning light flyweight title-holder who moved up in weight last month and captured the WBC flyweight title at the expense of Cristofer Rosales.
Other Bouts of Note
Welterweight Conah Walker, from the Birmingham bedroom community of Wolverhampton, won a clear-cut 10-round decision over Lewis Ritson, winning by scores of 98-93 and 97-93 twice.
A former British lightweight champion, Ritson (23-5) lost for the fourth time in his last six starts, but was game to the core. At various times he appeared on the verge of being stopped, but he may have won the final round when he got the best of several exchanges. Walker, a heavy favorite, improved to 14-3-1 (6).
In a 12-round middleweight match, Kieron Conway won his fourth straight, advancing to 22-3-1 (6) with a split decision over a local product, Ryan Kelly (19-5-1). Kelly got the nod on one of the cards (115-114), but was out-voted by his colleagues who had it 116-112 and 115-113 for Conway.
While the decision was fair, this was a lackluster performance by Conway who had fought much stiffer competition and entered the ring a 6/1 favorite.
Twenty-two-year-old junior welterweight Cameron Vuong, a stablemate of Jack Catterall, stepped up in class and improved to 7-0 (3) with a 10-round unanimous decision over Gavin Gwynne. The judges had it 97-94, 96-94, and 96-95.
Vuong, who is half Vietnamese, out-boxed Gwynne from the outside but was far from impressive. A 34-year-old Welshman and veteran of eight domestic title fights, Gwynne (17-4-1) was the aggressor throughout and there were scattered boos when the decision was announced.
In a scheduled 8-rounder that wasn’t part of the main card, Liverpool’s Callum Smith (30-2, 22 KOs) wacked out Colombian trial horse Carlos Galvan in the fifth round. Smith, whose only defeats came at the hands of future Hall of Famers Canelo Alvarez (L 12) and Artur Beterbiev (L TKO 7), knocked Galvan down in the fourth and then twice more in the fifth with body punches before the match was halted. Galvan declined to 20-15-2.
Photo credit: Mark Robinson / Matchroom
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Avila Perspective, Chap. 306: Flyweight Rumble in England, Ryan Garcia in SoCal
Avila Perspective, Chap. 306: Flyweight Rumble in England, Ryan Garcia in SoCal
With most of America in a turkey coma, all boxing eyes should be pointed toward England this weekend.
Former world titlist Sunny Edwards (21-1, 4 KOs) challenges the fast-rising Galal Yafai (8-0, 6 KOs) for a regional flyweight on Saturday, Nov. 30, at Resorts World Arena in Birmingham. DAZN will stream the Matchroom Boxing card.
Without the fast-talking and dare-to-be-great Edwards, the flyweight division and super flyweight divisions would be in a blanket of invisibility. He’s the kind of personality the lower weight classes need.
The London kid loves to talk and loves to fight even more.
Edwards was calling out Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez when the San Antonio fighter was blasting out feared Thai slugger Srisaket Sor Rungvisai and dismantling Mexico’s Carlos Cuadras. And he did this in front of a worldwide audience.
Of course, he fell short of defeating the young superstar but he kick-started the weight division with new life. And here he is again enticing more eyes on the flyweights as he challenges another potential star.
“I was happy and proud of Galal when he won the Olympic gold medal,” said Edwards who has sparred Yafai many times. “When me and Galal get in a small space, it’s fireworks.”
Yafai, a 2021 Tokyo Olympic gold medalist, only has eight pro fights but at age 31 doesn’t have time to walk through the stages of careful preparation. But with blazing speed to go along with big power in his southpaw punches, it’s time for the Birmingham native to claim his spot on the world stage.
Is he ready?
“It’s a massive fight, it speaks for itself. Sunny is a great fighter, a former world champion, a good name and we’ve got history as well,” Yafai said at the press conference.” I’ve got to be a bit smarter, but I know Sunny inside-out.”
Both have blazing speed. Yafai has the power, but Edwards has the experience of pro-style competition.
Promoter Eddie Hearn calls this one of the top fights in British boxing.
“Sunny doesn’t care, he wants to be in great fights, he believes in himself and he is rolling the dice again on Saturday night, as is Galal. An Olympic gold medalist from Birmingham with just a handful of fights really, and already stepping up to take on one of the top, top flyweights in the world,” said Hearns.
Ryan Garcia in Beverly Hills
The budding Southern California superstar Ryan Garcia met the boxing media in Beverly Hills to announce an exhibition match against Japan’s kickboxing star Rukiya Anpo on December 30 in Tokyo. FANMIO pay-per-view will show the match if it takes place.
Garcia is still under contract with Golden Boy Promotions and according to the promotion company an agreement has not been established. But with Garcia under suspension for PED use following his last fight against Devin Haney back in April, an opportunity for the popular fighter to make a living will probably be allowed.
As long as everyone gets their cut.
Now 26, Garcia seeks to get back in the prize ring and do what he does best and that’s fire left hooks in machine gun fashion.
“He tried to knock out Manny Pacquiao and it pissed me off,” said Garcia on his reasons for accepting an exhibition match with the bigger in size Anpo. “That rubbed me the wrong way and now I’m here to show him someone in his prime with speed and power.”
Anpo wants a knockout and nothing else.
“I regret that I couldn’t finish Manny Pacquiao,” said Anpo who met Pacquiao in an exhibition this past summer in Tokyo. “That’s what we train to do in every fight. I have even more motivation this time and I will knock him out and finish Ryan Garcia as a professional.”
Following the press conference on Tuesday, Nov. 26, an e-mail by Golden Boy was sent to the media and stated: “Golden Boy Promotions has exclusive rights to Ryan Garcia’s fights. The organizers of this event (Garcia vs. Anpo) have acknowledged as such and have agreed in writing that our sign-off is needed for this event to occur. As no such sign-off has been given, as of today there is no event with Ryan Garcia.”
Simply said, they get their cut or no fight.
The potential money-making fight has a strong possibility to occur.
Photo credit: Mark Robinson / Matchroom
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The Noted Trainer Kevin Henry, Lucky to Be Alive, Reflects on Devin Haney and More
This past summer, on July 21, Las Vegas boxing trainer Kevin Henry almost died. He was on the Las Vegas Strip, walking north from Caesars Palace, when he was the victim of an auto-pedestrian accident, hit by a careless uber driver exiting the Treasure Island casino after dropping off a passenger.
Henry suffered two broken bones in his neck, shoulder and hip displacements, lost two teeth, and had facial injuries that required plastic surgery. He spent three months in the hospital, the first 20 days in ICU and the final month at an in-patient rehabilitation facility.
The good news is that the pain has subsided and Kevin Henry is back in the gym mentoring boxers and enjoying the camaraderie of his peers.
Kevin, 55, grew up around the sport. His father, the late Norman Henry, was a fixture on the Philadelphia boxing scene going back to the late 1940s when he was Bob Montgomery’s Man Friday. The elder Henry co-managed Jeff Chandler and others and had a long association with Don King where he defined his role as that of a troubleshooter. Kevin was born in Philadelphia, spent several years in the LA area during the days when his father was a matchmaker for Harold Smith’s MAPS (an acronym for Muhammad Ali Professional Sports), and has been a full-time resident of Las Vegas since 1992.
“When I was 16, maybe 17, I was the youngest licensed second in New Jersey” says Henry. “In Philadelphia, I got to hang with great old-school trainers like George Benton. In LA, my home away from home was the Hoover Street Gym. Jackie McCoy, Eddie Futch, and Jesse Reid trained fighters there. A young trainer couldn’t ask for a better schoolhouse.
“The old-school trainers liked me because I was organized. If a kid said to me, oops, I forgot my gym bag or I can’t spar because I forgot my mouthpiece – and this happened a lot – I’d say, no you didn’t, I have it right here. And the kids knew if they went out and did something they shouldn’t have, that I wasn’t going to tattle-tale.”
When Henry moved to Las Vegas, the local heavyweight scene was percolating. Michael Dokes was here as were Oliver McCall and Michael Hunter Sr. The latter two fought each other as they were climbing the ladder and eventually became fast friends.
The ill-fated Hunter would become a member of the family. He married Kevin Henry’s sister. Michael Hunter Jr, a leading heavyweight contender whose victims include the white-hot Martin Bakole and Michael’s younger brother Keith Hunter, a 15-2 junior welterweight, are Kevin’s nephews.
Discounting Devin Haney’s father Bill, no boxing coach has spent more time in the company of Devin Haney. Henry was in Devin’s corner for the vast majority of his amateur bouts, including five of Devin’s six meetings with his great amateur rival Ryan Garcia, and their tie continued after Devin transitioned into a pro.
“He was like a little brother to me,” says Henry. “I remember the first day I saw him. It was at the old Round One gym which isn’t here anymore. A Rolls Royce pulled up out front. Derrick Harmon, who fought Roy Jones, was there with me. We figured that the person in the car was probably some famous professional athlete who had come to work up a sweat. But it was Bill Haney with his nine-year-old son. Neither Bill nor his kid knew anything about boxing; Bill wanted someone to teach Devin how to box. The boy was a blank canvas.
“Bill left and when he came back, he said, ‘how did he do?’ He was so proud when we told him his kid was a natural. Derrick and I couldn’t believe that the boy had never been in the gym before. We were amazed.”
The precocious Haney, who turned pro in Mexico at age 16, proved to be as good as advertised. He won the WBC world lightweight title in his twenty-fourth pro fight, pitching a shutout over previously undefeated Alfredo Santiago, went on to unify the title with wins over George Kambosos and Vasyl Lomachenko, and pitched another shutout in his first venture at 140, whitewashing Regis Prograis to capture another world title belt.
Kevin Henry was there for some of these fights and was lost in the shuffle at others. It remains a sore spot.
No active boxer has been looked-over by as many prominent trainers as Devin Haney. Bill Haney, who would be a finalist for both the 2023 BWAA Trainer of the Year and Manager of the Year, winning the latter, operated on the assumption that all had something useful to contribute and that from their inputs he could build something that was greater than the sum of its parts. He was bucking several bromides including the chestnut that too many chefs spoil the broth and that brings us to the night of April 20, 2024, when Bill Haney’s son caught up with his old amateur rival Ryan Garcia at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
In a memorable fight, Garcia buzzed Haney in the opening minute of the match with his patented left hook and would then go on to dominate the second half of the fight, putting Haney on the canvas three times – in rounds 7, 10, and 11 – en route to a scorching upset.
As we know, Garcia, who came in three pounds overweight, would have the “W” stripped from him when his urine samples revealed the presence of a performance-enhancing drug, ostarine. The New York State Athletic Commission changed the result to a no-contest and that is how it appears at boxrec, the sport’s official record-keeper.
Devin Haney remains undefeated (31-0, 1 NC) but Ryan Garcia knocked the mystique out of him.
In part because of his tender age – he turned 26 earlier this month – Haney was considered a threat to break Floyd Mayweather’s 50-0 record. No one talks about that anymore and if it should happen, it would command an asterisk.
Kevin Henry was there at the Haney-Garcia fight but, in a sense, he wasn’t there.
“They never put my name on the comp list ” he says, “so there was no ticket or pass waiting for me when I got to the arena. I was actually on the subway heading back to my hotel when Devin called me. He said, ‘where you at ‘bro.’ When I explained the situation to him, he said ‘turn around and come back and go to security.’
“Devin arranged to have a ticket waiting for me. My seat was directly behind his corner. The undercard was already in progress when I got back.
“This will sound arrogant, but I am certain the outcome would have been different if Devin had a different corner. The most experienced guy in his corner that night was Bob Ware, and Bob isn’t a trainer; he’s a cutman. When Devin faced adversity for the first time in his life, there was no experienced head there to get him turned around.
“In preparation for Garcia, we spent 3-4 weeks at Freddie Roach’s Wild Card Gym. I actually suggested to Bill that he use Freddie in the corner. Freddie sees things that other trainers don’t see, even me, and Freddie would have known what adjustments to make. But Bill said no. He didn’t want to cede his authority.”
Kevin Henry’s admiration for Devin Haney, as a boxer and a person, hasn’t waned. “Ryan Garcia came in overweight at the weigh-in and you can just imagine how much weight he put on after he rehydrated. When they stood at center ring to get the referee’s instructions, Garcia looked like a middleweight to me. Devin dug deep and fought a great fight against a guy who was bigger and on steroids. One of the judges even had it a draw.” (True. Veteran arbiter Max DeLuca scored it 112-112. The other judges had Garcia winning by 4 and 6 points.)
As to what to expect from Devin when he returns, Henry says, “I worry about the mental part; some boxers don’t take losing well.” There are no such concerns about Kevin Henry who lost none of his mental acuity in that terrible accident and is back in his comfort zone.
Haney-Garcia photo credit: Cris Esqueda / Golden Boy Promotions
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