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Deontay Wilder’s New Nuances Almost as Startling as His Trademark Right Hand
How much improvement can a fighter, any fighter, demonstrate in only 137 seconds? How many sandpaper-rough stylistic edges can be smoothed in that comparatively brief snippet of time?
Before WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder entered the ring at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn Saturday night, the one thing everyone knew he had was a booming right hand that had accounted for virtually all of his previous 39 knockout victories, 19 of which were one-round quickies. At first glance it appeared another case of the same devastating stuff when Wilder (41-0-1, 40 KOs) landed his signature shot with less than a minute remaining in the opening round. Semi-conscious challenger Dominic Breazeale (20-2, 18 KOs) crashed onto his back, his arms and legs outstretched as if he were being spread-eagled, with referee Harvey Dock going through the formality of counting him out after an elapsed time of 2 minutes, 17 seconds.
But it was in those two-plus minutes prior to an ending that everyone in the live turnout of 13,181 and a Showtime audience should have expected that Wilder, at the relatively advanced age of 33, revealed that he might be more than a one-trick pony. This Wilder didn’t just use his boarding-house-reach of a jab as a range finder; he snapped it out with some authority. He threw and landed an early left hook to the body, notable because the Wilder with whom fight fans were familiar was almost exclusively a headhunter. And, most telling of all, the two big right hands that did find the mark – he got Breazeale’s attention prior to the putaway blow with one that didn’t quite land flush – weren’t his typical roundhouses.
“The quickest point from A to B is always that straight line, that right hand straight down the middle,” color analyst Paulie Malignaggi said of what would appear to be a new and improved version of Wilder’s weapon of choice.
“I’m an intelligent fighter. I’m very smart in the ring with the way I set these guys up,” Wilder said at the post-fight press conference. But if that were so, these additional wrinkles or nuances would have been unveiled earlier in a career that hasn’t always been as appreciated as it might have been. He is still trained by Jay Deas and Mark Breland, so the logical conclusion is that what they likely have been telling him all along in the gym must finally have sunk in. If that is indeed the case, then Wilder, whose startling power when unleashed in any form made him an omnipresent threat, had in those 137 seconds transformed himself into an even more dangerous dude.
They say history has a way of repeating itself. Another large heavyweight of considerable renown, Lennox Lewis, fought much like the unpolished Wilder in the formative stages of his Hall of Fame career. But after Lewis relinquished his WBC title to seemingly no-hope challenger Oliver McCall, who dropped and then stopped him in the second round on May 13, 1995, in London, he fired trainer Pepe Correa and replaced him with Emanuel Steward, who had worked McCall’s corner the night “The Lion” became an ex-champ. Steward, a brilliant tactician, radically retooled Lewis, especially his jab, which was upgraded from pawing range-finder to the instrument that made the big Briton’s overhand right even more effective. Following perfunctory TKOs of Lionel Butler and Justin Fortune in his next two bouts, the best of Lewis was revealed on Oct. 7, 1995, in Atlantic City, N.J., when he floored a bloodied Tommy Morrison four times en route to winning via a sixth-round stoppage.
“I really feel like I have one of the superior jabs in the heavyweight division right now,” a beaming Lewis said after that fight, in which he showcased not only his spiffy new jab but a left hook that the pre-Steward version seldom dared to employ. “I wanted to see how Tommy Morrison would contend with it. The first couple of rounds, he contended with it. But as the rounds went by, I found my jab started to get to him.”
Is Wilder going to continue to utilize more of the tools in what would appear to be an expanded tool box? Difficult to predict. As sample sizes go, 137 seconds isn’t much. Even his destruction of the limited Breazeale may not be conclusive proof that he has matched or supplanted Anthony Joshua (22-0, 21 KOs) atop the heavyweight heap. The Englishman has three bejeweled championship belts (IBF, WBA, WBO) to Wilder’s one, and he is a wide favorite to retain them when he takes on late substitute challenger Andy Ruiz Jr. (32-1, 21 KOs) in Joshua’s U.S. debut June 1 in Madison Square Garden. There also are those who are convinced lineal champ Tyson Fury (27-0-1, 19 KOs) is superior to Wilder, despite the fact Wilder dropped him twice in their Dec. 1 bout last year that ended in a split draw. Unless or until Wilder again faces Fury, or Joshua, he will be obliged to continue convincing however many doubters remain unswayed by his string of exclamation-point knockouts.
“I display greatness when I step in the ring,” Wilder said. “I put fear in any man. I know I have tremendous power. That’s no secret. At this point I think I’ve proved myself, with the record that I have and many a body that done hit the canvas.”
Truth be told, it is becoming more and more difficult to dismiss Wilder as a crude, wild-swinging brawler who was absent the day fundamental boxing skills were being taught. You want to say that some of the nine title defenses he’s made were against fringe contenders that didn’t exactly constitute a Murderer’s Row? Fine, but he went toe-to-toe with Luis Ortiz and weathered a few sticky moments before winning on a 10th-round stoppage, and he came ever so close to knocking out Fury in the 12th round, a rare late bolt of lightning that likely preserved his undefeated record. Oh, and don’t forget that he was willing to go to Moscow to defend his title against Russia’s Alexander Povetkin, a bout which was scrapped when Povetkin tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs.
“Deontay will fight anyone,” said his co-manager, Shelly Finkel, who previously worked with, among others, Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson. “He was willing to fight Joshua for very little comparative to what he was worth. When someone wants to make a fight, they make it. When we wanted to get Fury, we overpaid him. We gave him anything he wanted in order to make the fight.”
There almost certainly will be more concessions made by Team Wilder to procure a date with Joshua, not the least of which will be the requirement to travel to the United Kingdom, where Joshua sells out soccer stadiums. Joshua, who had handed Breazeale his only previous defeat, by seventh-round TKO on June 26, 2016, had publicly stated that he hoped Breazeale would last at least until the eighth round against Wilder, if only to keep up appearances.
Maybe he isn’t the least flawed of heavyweights, but with his ninth consecutive heavyweight title defense – matching the number for sixth place all time shared by Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Vitali Klitschko, Lewis and Tyson – he has entered the conversation for being one of the hardest-punching of big men. It is not yet where he wants to be, but as a launching pad for bigger and better things, it ain’t half-bad.
The Real Godzilla is 5-foot-5 and 118 pounds
As impressive as the bomb Wilder detonated on Breazeale’s jaw, the top performance of the day came half a world away, in Glasgow, Scotland, where Japan’s Naoya Inoue (18-0, 16 KOs), whose nickname is “The Monster,” looked like the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world with his second-round knockout of Puerto Rico’s Emmanuel Rodriguez (19-1, 12 KOs), the IBF bantamweight champion, in the semifinals of the World Boxing Super Series. Until Inoue floored him three times with left hooks Joe Frazier would have been proud of, Rodriguez, his face contorted in agony on each trip to the canvas, had never been knocked down as a professional.
Inoue’s victory moves him into the WBSS 118-pound final against veteran Nonito Donaire (40-5, 26 KOs), the WBA and WBC Diamond titlist who also has a pretty good left hook.
So dominant has the 26-year-old Inoue been that there were immediate suggestions he move up – way up – in the pound-for-pound ratings, maybe far enough up to supplant Vasiliy Lomachenko or Terence Crawford at No. 1, depending on which list you choose to believe. It’s a reason for legitimate discussion, because Inoue really is that good. Maybe he already has done enough to rise above the great Hall of Famer Fighting Harada as the best ever from the Land of the Rising Sun.
Photo credit: Amanda Westcott / SHOWTIME
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Mizuki Hiruta Dominates in her U.S. Debut and Omar Trinidad Wins Too at Commerce
Japan’s Mizuki Hiruta smashed through Mexico’s Maribel Ramirez with ease in winning by technical decision and local hero Omar Trinidad continued his assault on the featherweight division on Friday.
Hiruta (7-0, 2 KOs), who prefers to be called “Mimi,” made her American debut with an impressive performance against Mexican veteran Maribel Ramirez (15-11-4) and retained the WBO super flyweight world title by unanimous decision at Commerce Casino in Commerce, Calif.
The pink-haired Japanese southpaw champion quickly proved to be quicker, stronger and even better than advertised. In the opening round Ramirez landed on the floor twice after throwing errant blows. On one instance, it could have been ruled a knockdown but it was not a convincing blow.
In the second round, Ramirez again attacked and again was met with a Hiruta check right hook and down went the Mexican. This time referee Ray Corona gave the eight-count and the fight resumed.
It was Hiruta’s third title defense but this time it was on American soil. She seemed nervous by the prospect of getting a favorable review from the more than 700 fans inside the casino tent.
For more than a year Hiruta has been training off and on with Manny Robles in the L.A. area. Now that she has a visa, she has spent considerable time this year learning the tricks of the trade. They proved explosively effective.
Though Mexico City’s Ramirez has considerable experience against world champions, she discovered that Hiruta was not easy to hit. Often, the Japanese champion would slip and counter with precision.
It was an impressive American debut, though the fight was stopped in the eighth round after a collision of heads. The scores were tallied and all three saw Hiruta the winner by scores of 80-71 twice and 79-72.
“I’m so happy. I could have done much more,” said Hiruta through interpreter Yuriko Miyata. “I wanted to do more things that Manny Robles taught me.”
Trinidad Wins Too
Omar Trinidad (18-0-1, 13 KOs) discovered that challenger Mike Plania (31-5, 18 KOs) has a very good chin and staying power. But over 10 rounds Trinidad proved to be too fast and too busy for the Filipino challenger.
Immediately it was evident that the East L.A. featherweight was too quick and too busy for Plania who preferred a counter-puncher attack that never worked.
“He was strong,” said Trinidad. “He took everything.”
After 10 redundant rounds all three judges scored for Trinidad 100-90 twice and 99-91. He retains the WBC Continental Americas title.
Other Bouts
Ali Akhmedov (23-1, 17 KOs) blasted out Malcolm Jones (17-5-1) in less than two rounds. A dozen punches by Akhmedov forced referee Thomas Taylor to stop the super middleweight fight.
Iyana “Roxy” Verduzco (3-0) bloodied Lindsey Ellis in the first round and continued the speedy assault in the next two rounds. Referee Ray Corona saw enough and stopped the fight in favor of Verduzco at 1:34 of the third round.
Gloria Munguilla (7-1) and Brook Sibrian (5-2) lit up the boxing ring with a nonstop clash for eight rounds in their light flyweight fight. Munguilla proved effective with a slip-and-counter attack. Sibrian adjusted and made the fight closer in the last four rounds but all three judges favored Munguilla.
More Winners
Joshua Anton, Tayden Beltran, Adan Palma, and Alexander Gueche all won their bouts.
Photos credit: Al Applerose
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Avila Perspective, Chap. 309: 360 Promotions Opens with Trinidad, Mizuki and More
Avila Perspective, Chap. 309: 360 Promotions Opens with Trinidad, Mizuki and More
Best wishes to the survivors of the Los Angeles wildfires that took place last week and are still ongoing in small locales.
Most of the heavy damage took place in the western part of L.A. near the ocean due to Santa Ana winds. Another very hot spot was in Altadena just north of the Rose Bowl. It was a horrific tragedy.
Hopefully the worst is over.
Pro boxing returns with 360 Boxing Promotions spotlighting East L.A.’s Omar Trinidad (17-0-1, 13 KOs) defending a regional featherweight title against Mike Plania (31-4, 18 KOs) on Friday, Jan. 17, at the Commerce Casino in Commerce, Calif.
“I’m the king of L.A. boxing and I’ll be ready to put on a show headlining again in the main event. This is my year, I’m ready to challenge and defeat any of the featherweight world champions,” said Trinidad.
UFC Fight Pass will stream the Hollywood Night fight card that includes a female world championship fight and other intriguing match-ups.
Tom Loeffler heads 360 Promotions and once again comes full force with a hot prospect in Trinidad. If you’re not familiar with Loeffler’s history of success, he introduced America to Oleksandr Usyk, Gennady “GGG” Golovkin and the brothers Wladimir and Vitaly Kltischko.
“We’ve got a wealth of international talent and local favorites to kick off our 2025 in grand style,” said Loeffler.
He knows talent.
Trinidad hails from the Boyle Heights area of East L.A. near the Los Angeles riverbed. Several fighters from the past came from that exact area including the first Golden Boy, Art Aragon.
Aragon was a huge gate attraction during the late 1940s until 1960. He was known as a lady’s man and dated several Hollywood starlets in his time. Though he never won a world title he did fight world champions Carmen Basilio, Jimmy Carter and Lauro Salas. He was more or less the king of the Olympic Auditorium and Los Angeles boxing during his career.
Other famous boxers from the Boyle Heights area were notorious gangster Mickey Cohen and former world champion Joey Olivo.
Can Trinidad reach world title status?
Facing Trinidad will be Filipino fighter Plania who’s knocked off a couple of prospects during his career including Joshua “Don’t Blink” Greer and Giovanni Gutierrez. The fighter from General Santos in the Philippines can crack and hold his own in the boxing ring.
It’s a very strong fight card and includes WBO world titlist Mizuki Hiruta of Japan who defends the super flyweight title against Mexican veteran Maribel Ramirez. It’s a tough matchup for Hiruta who makes her American debut. You can’t miss her with that pink hair and she has all the physical tools to make a splash in this country.
Two other female bouts are also planned, including light flyweight banger L.A.’s Gloria Munguilla (6-1) against Coachella’s Brook Sibrian (5-1) in a match set for six rounds. Both are talented fighters. Another female fight includes super featherweights Iyana “Right Hook Roxy” Verduzco (2-0) versus Lindsey Ellis (2-1) in another six-rounder. Ellis can crack with all her wins coming via knockout. Verduzco is a multi-national titlist as an amateur.
Others scheduled to perform are Ali Akhmedov, Joshua Anton, Adan Palma and more.
Doors open at 4:30 p.m.
Boxing and the Media
The sport of professional boxing is currently in flux. It’s always in flux but no matter what people may say or write, boxing will survive.
Whether you like Jake Paul or not, he proved boxing has worldwide appeal with monstrous success in his last show. He has media companies looking at the numbers and imagining what they can do with the sport.
Sure, UFC is negotiating a massive billion dollar deal with media companies, as is WWE, both are very similar in that they provide combat entertainment. You don’t need to know the champions because they really don’t matter. Its about the attractions.
Boxing is different. The good champions last and build a following that endures even beyond their careers a la Mike Tyson.
MMA can’t provide that longevity, but it does provide entertainment.
Currently, there is talk of establishing a boxing league again. It’s been done over and over but we shall see if it sticks this time.
Pro boxing is the true warrior’s path and that means a solo adventure. It’s a one-on-one sport and that appeals to people everywhere. It’s the oldest sport that can be traced to prehistoric times. You don’t need classes in Brazilian Jiujitsu, judo, kick boxing or wrestling. Just show up in a boxing gym and they can put you to work.
It’s a poor person’s path that can lead to better things and most importantly discipline.
Photos credit: Lina Baker
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Boxing Trainer Bob Santos Paid his Dues and is Reaping the Rewards
Bob Santos, the 2022 Sports Illustrated and The Ring magazine Trainer of the Year, is a busy fellow. On Feb. 1, fighters under his tutelage will open and close the show on the four-bout main portion of the Prime Video PPV event at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Jeison Rosario continues his comeback in the lid-lifter, opposing Jesus Ramos. In the finale, former Cuban amateur standout David Morrell will attempt to saddle David Benavidez with his first defeat. Both combatants in the main event have been chasing 168-pound kingpin Canelo Alvarez, but this bout will be contested for a piece of the light heavyweight title.
When the show is over, Santos will barely have time to exhale. Before the month is over, one will likely find him working the corner of Dainier Pero, Brian Mendoza, Elijah Garcia, and perhaps others.
Benavidez (29-0, 24 KOs) turned 28 last month. He is in the prime of his career. However, a lot of folk rate Morrell (11-0, 9 KOs) a very live dog. At last look, Benavidez was a consensus 7/4 (minus-175) favorite, a price that betokens a very competitive fight.
Bob Santos, needless to say, is confident that his guy can upset the odds. “I have worked with both,” he says. “It’s a tough fight for David Morrell, but he has more ways to victory because he’s less one-dimensional. He can go forward or fight going back and his foot speed is superior.”
Benavidez’s big edge, in the eyes of many, is his greater experience. He captured the vacant WBC 168-pound title at age 20, becoming the youngest super middleweight champion in history. As a pro, Benavidez has answered the bell for 148 rounds compared with only 54 for Morrell, but Bob Santos thinks this angle is largely irrelevant.
“Sure, I’d rather have pro experience than amateur experience,” he says, “but if you look at Benavidez’s record, he fought a lot of soft opponents when he was climbing the ladder.”
True. Benavidez, who turned pro at age 16, had his first seven fights in Mexico against a motley assortment of opponents. His first bout on U.S. soil occurred in his native Pheonix against an opponent with a 1-6-2 record.
While it’s certainly true that Morrell, 26, has yet to fight an opponent the caliber of Caleb Plant, he took up boxing at roughly the same tender age as Benavidez and earned his spurs in the vaunted Cuban amateur system, eventually defeating elite amateurs in international tournaments.
“If you look at his [pro] record, you will notice that [Morrell] has hardly lost a round,” says Santos of the fighter who captured an interim title in only his third professional bout with a 12-round decision over Guyanese veteran Lennox Allen.
Bob Santos is something of a late bloomer. He was around boxing for a long time, assisting such notables as Joe Goossen, Emanuel Steward, and Ronnie Shields before becoming recognized as one of the sport’s top trainers.
A native of San Jose, he grew up in a Hispanic neighborhood but not in a household where Spanish was spoken. “I know enough now to get by,” he says modestly. He attended James Lick High School whose most famous alumnus is Heisman winning and Super Bowl winning quarterback Jim Plunkett. “We worked in the same apricot orchard when we were kids,” says Santos. “Not at the same time, but in the same field.”
After graduation, he followed his father’s footsteps into construction work, but boxing was always beckoning. A cousin, the late Luis Molina, represented the U.S. as a lightweight in the 1956 Melbourne Summer Olympics, and was good enough as a pro to appear in a main event at Madison Square Garden where he lost a narrow decision to the notorious Puerto Rican hothead Frankie Narvaez, a future world title challenger.
Santos’ cousin was a big draw in San Jose in an era when the San Jose / Sacramento territory was the bailiwick of Don Chargin. “Don was a beautiful man and his wife Lorraine was even nicer,” says Santos of the husband/wife promotion team who are enshrined in the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Don Chargin was inducted in 2001 and Lorraine posthumously in 2018.
Chargin promoted Fresno-based featherweight Hector Lizarraga who captured the IBF title in 1997. Lizarraga turned his career around after a 5-7-3 start when he hooked up with San Jose gym operator Miguel Jara. It was one of the most successful reclamation projects in boxing history and Bob Santos played a part in it.
Bob hopes to accomplish the same turnaround with Jeison Rosario whose career was on the skids when Santos got involved. In his most recent start, Rosario held heavily favored Jarrett Hurd to a draw in a battle between former IBF 154-pound champions on a ProBox card in Florida.
“I consider that one of my greatest achievements,” says Santos, noting that Rosario was stopped four times and effectively out of action for two years before resuming his career and is now on the cusp of earning another title shot.
The boxer with whom Santos is most closely identified is former four-division world title-holder Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero. The slick southpaw, the pride of Gilroy, California, the self-proclaimed “Garlic Capital of the World,” retired following a bad loss to Omar Figueroa Jr, but had second thoughts and is currently riding a six-fight winning streak. “I’ve known him since he was 15 years old,” notes Santos.
Years from now, Santos may be more closely identified with the Pero brothers, Dainier and Lenier, who aspire to be the Cuban-American version of the Klitschko brothers.
Santos describes Dainier, one of the youngest members of Cuba’s Olympic Team in Tokyo, as a bigger version of Oleksandr Usyk. That may be stretching it, but Dainier (10-0, 8 KOs as a pro), certainly hits harder.
This reporter was a fly on the wall as Santos put Dainier Pero through his paces on Tuesday (Jan. 14) at Bones Adams gym in Las Vegas. Santos held tight to a punch shield, in the boxing vernacular a donut, as the Cuban practiced his punches. On several occasions the trainer was knocked off-balance and the expression on his face as his body absorbed some of the after-shocks, plainly said, “My goodness, what the hell am I doing here? There has to be an easier way to make a living.” It was an assignment that Santos would have undoubtedly preferred handing off to his young assistant, his son Joe Santos, but Joe was preoccupied coordinating David Morrell’s camp.
Dainer’s brother Lenier is also an ex-Olympian, and like Dainier was a super heavyweight by trade as an amateur. With an 11-0 (8 KOs) record, Lenier Pero’s pro career was on a parallel path until stalled by a managerial dispute. Lenier last fought in March of last year and Santos says he will soon join his brother in Las Vegas.
There’s little to choose between the Pero brothers, but Dainier is considered to have the bigger upside because at age 25 he is the younger sibling by seven years.
Bob Santos was in the running again this year for The Ring magazine’s Trainer of the Year, one of six nominees for the honor that was bestowed upon his good friend Robert Garcia. Considering the way that Santos’ career is going, it’s a safe bet that he will be showered with many more accolades in the years to come.
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