The Force is With Anthony Joshua as `The (British) Empire Strikes Back’

Published

5 years ago

May 28, 2019

The date was Dec. 8, 2007, and WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr., who had just doused the hopes, if not the enthusiasm, of thousands of British boxing fans who had traveled to Las Vegas from the United Kingdom to cheer countryman Ricky Hatton in his bid to dethrone the favored American, spoke of a trans-oceanic trip he hadn’t made, and never would have to.

“I always wanted to fight in the UK,” Mayweather mused after he had dominated and then stopped the previously undefeated Hatton in the 10^th round. “But because I couldn’t, I had the best fighter in the UK come to me.”

Mayweather never made it across the pond because he had the power and leverage to make all challengers travel to a place of his choosing, which frequently was the MGM Grand on the Vegas Strip. When you are the perpetual side `A’ and highest-grossing prizefighter of all time, it’s not difficult to make side `B’ dance to your tune when it comes to negotiating contractual terms.

Times have changed, and the first working assignment in America for British’s vastly popular world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua (22-0, 21 KOs), who takes on blubbery Mexican-American Andy Ruiz Jr. (32-1, 21 KOs) in the DAZN-streamed main event Saturday night at Madison Square Garden, bears little to no resemblance to the trip made by Hatton nearly 12 years ago. It most definitely is not reminiscent of the seemingly endless decades of failure by British big men, who without exception were required to journey to the United States and take regularly scheduled beatdowns from clearly superior American champions. That happened so often and over so long a period that it resulted in the coining of the term “horizontal heavyweights” to describe the manner in which most of the Brits’ longshot challenges were so emphatically squashed.

The non-boxing British Empire – which once was called “the empire on which the sun never sets” – officially became a thing of the past in 1997 when the UK ceded control of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China. It must have been a bitter pill to swallow for a relatively small island nation that, in 1913, held sway over 23 percent of the world’s population and 24 percent of the land mass. The ebbing of British influence in a general sense more or less correlates to the lengthy gap between the heavyweight title reigns of Bob Fitzsimmons, who held the title from March 17, 1897, to June 9, 1899, and the first of three separate title ascendances for Lennox Lewis, achieved when he was arbitrarily declared the WBC champion on Dec. 14, 1992, in place of American Riddick Bowe, who had publicly renounced that sanctioning body’s recognition by dumping its bejeweled green belt into a trash can.

Thus did Lewis, born in London to Jamaican immigrant parents, become the first British world heavyweight champion of the 20^th century. And when he made the first defense of that title on May 8, 1993, with a 12-round unanimous decision over former IBF titlist Tony Tucker in Las Vegas, it ended an ignominious streak of 13 consecutive championship-bout defeats by British heavyweights to American titlists, all of which occurred on U.S. soil.

But Lewis did not so much take his various titles back to the UK as to keep them on semi-permanent loan to the U.S. Of the 18 world championship bouts in which he participated, 14 were in America, three in the UK and one in Africa. That, he has consistently stated, was by his choice and in recognition of the United States as the epicenter of all boxing and especially championship-level heavyweight boxing.

“In the beginning when I started boxing in America, I used to get booed because I was the Brit coming over to their country,” said Lewis, now 53 and retired since June 2003. “But when I won over there, they said, `Fine, he’s an OK Brit. He boxes well.’ They accepted me as a good fighter.

“In any case, you really had to go to America in those days for the big fights with Tyson, Holyfield and those guys.”

Similar sentiments were echoed by long-reigning super middleweight champion Joe Calzaghe, the undefeated Welsh southpaw who logged 42 of his 46 career victories in the UK, one each in Germany and Denmark and two – the last two of his storied career – in the U.S., one in Vegas and one in New York.

“Brits, in order to prove themselves, always have to go over to America,” Calzaghe remarked a few days prior to his lifting of The Ring magazine’s light heavyweight championship belt on a 12-round split decision over Bernard Hopkins on April 19, 2008, in Las Vegas’ Thomas & Mack Center.

Ah, but that was then and this is now, most pointedly in a heavyweight division in which America’s stranglehold of all or most of the undisputed and alphabet championships has devolved into a significantly loosened grip. Although the United States, with 54, remains far and away the leader in world heavyweight titles once or now held by representatives of a particular nation, the United Kingdom, a distant second with eight, is doing its best to paint over any lingering vestiges of the dark days of its “horizontal heavyweights,” an era in which defeat not only was anticipated, but accepted without complaint if the occasionally valiant loser exhibited what the British like to call a stiff upper lip.

“They love a loser in this country,” a perplexed Calzaghe said in Wales while preparing for his date with Hopkins. “It’s ridiculous.”

Four of the six Brits to have held some version of the heavyweight crown have done so since Lewis: Herbie Hide (WBO, two reigns), Frank Bruno (WBC), Henry Akinwande (WBC) and, of course, Joshua. But the WBO was not regarded as a “major” organization when it was presenting championship straps to Hide and Akinwande, and even the thickly muscled and beloved Bruno was generally dismissed as a minor player during a time ruled by such renowned U.S. heavyweights as Tyson, Holyfield, Bowe, Larry Holmes, George Foreman and Michael Spinks.

All of which is reason enough to believe that Joshua, an overwhelming favorite over a game but seemingly overmatched Ruiz, will be at the Garden only to better introduce himself to American fight fans before returning to his comfort zone in the UK, where he is far and away the most popular and marketable fighter in Europe. No American fighter – and the only one who can even be mentioned in the same breath at this point is WBC champ Deontay Wilder (41-0-1, 40 KOs) – can pack arenas and even massive stadiums as does Anthony Oluwafemi Olaseni Joshua, the super heavyweight champion at the 2012 London Olympics and son of a Nigerian mother and Nigerian-Irish father. Joshua fought before crowds of 90,000 and 80,000, respectively, for defenses against Wladimir Klitschko and Alexander Povetkin in London’s Wembley Stadium, sandwiched around capacity turnouts of 78,000 in Cardiff, Wales’ Principality Stadium against Joseph Parker and Carlos Takam. If and when Joshua and Wilder agree to a much-anticipated full unification showdown, if AJ wants it on home turf, it will be so, and most likely not for the 50-50 revenue split that Wilder insists should be his because he ostensibly is in possession of the scepter once held by the regal likes of such American heavyweight legends as Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Muhammad Ali, Foreman, Holmes, Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield and Riddick Bowe.

Those days, at least for now, are past, and Joshua is a British big man who does not have to go America to stake his claim to what already is demonstrably his. He holds three titles (four, if you include the IBO’s) to Wilder’s one and is the more established drawing card. Unlike other UK heavyweight wannabes, and even champions, including Lewis, he almost always gets to set terms favorable to himself. In a very real sense, until further notice, he is what Mayweather used to be, big enough and important enough to get the world to come to him.

For now, though, he is in America for what could ultimately prove to be a one-and-done. It will be interesting to see if his fans, like those who followed Hatton to Vegas for the likely come-uppance from Mayweather, are as supportive of and passionate about a major favorite as they were of an underdog with a puncher’s chance to defy the odds. Will they again show up by the thousands, screaming themselves hoarse singing “Rule, Brittania” and “God Save the Queen”? Or have they become too comfortably familiar with success, now that it’s Americans, and likely soon a Mexican-American, who is left horizontal on the canvas?

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 282: Ryan’s Song, Golden Boy in Fresno and More

Published

9 hours ago

April 26, 2024

David A. Avila

Avila-Perspective-Chap-282-Ryan's-Song-Golden-Boy-in-Fresno-and-More

Don’t call it an upset.

Days after Ryan Garcia proved the experts wrong, those same experts are re-tooling their evaluation processes.

It’s mind-boggling to me that 95 percent thought Garcia had no chance. Hear me out.

First, Garcia and Haney fought six times as amateurs with each winning three. But this time with no head gear and smaller gloves, Garcia had to have at least a 50/50 chance of winning. He is faster and a more powerful puncher.

Facts.

Haney is a wonderful boxer with smooth, almost artistic movements. But history has taught us power and speed like Garcia’s can’t be discounted. Think way back to legendary fighters like Willie Pep and Sandy Sadler. All that excellent defensive skill could not prevent Sadler from beating Pep in three of their four meetings.

Power has always been an equalizer against boxing skill.

Ben Lira, one of the wisest and most experienced trainers in Southern California, always professed knockout power was the greatest equalizer in a fight. “You can be behind for nine rounds and one punch can change the outcome,” he said.

Another weird theory spreading before the fight was that Garcia would quit in the fight. That was a puzzling one. Getting stopped by a perfect body shot is not quitting. And that punch came from Gervonta “Tank” Davis who can really crack.

So how did Garcia do it?

In the opening round Ryan Garcia timed Devin Haney’s jab and countered with a snapping left hook that rattled and wobbled the super lightweight champion. After that, Garcia forced Haney to find another game plan.

Garcia and trainer Derrick James must have worked hours on that move.

I must confess that I first saw Garcia’s ability many years ago when he was around 11 or 12. So I do have an advantage regarding his talent. A few things I noticed even back then were his speed and power. Also, that others resented his talent but respected him. He was the guy with everything: talent and looks.

And that brings resentment.

Recently I saw him and his crew rapping a song on social media. Now he’s got a song. Next thing you know Hollywood will be calling and he’ll be in the movies. It’s happened before with fighters such as Art Aragon, the first Golden Boy in the 50s. He was dating movie stars and getting involved with starlets all over Hollywood.

Is history repeating itself or is Garcia creating a new era for boxing?

Since 2016 people claimed he was just a social media creation. Now, after his win over Devin Haney a former undisputed lightweight champion and the WBC super lightweight titleholder, the boxer from the high desert area of Victorville has become one of the highest paid fighters in the world.

Ryan Garcia has entered a new dimension.

Golden Boy Season

After several down years the Los Angeles-based company Golden Boy Promotions suddenly is cracking the whip in 2024.

Avila

Vergil Ortiz Jr. (20-0, 20 KOs) returns to the ring and faces Puerto Rico’s Thomas Dulorme (26-6-1, 17 KOs) a welterweight gatekeeper who lost to Jaron “Boots” Ennis and Eimantas Stanionis. They meet as super welterweights in the co-main event at Save Mart Arena in Fresno, Calif. on Saturday, April 27. DAZN will stream the Golden Boy Promotions card live.

It’s a quick return to action for Ortiz who is still adjusting to the new weight division. His last fight three months ago ended in less than one round in Las Vegas. It was cut short by an antsy referee and left Ortiz wanting more after more than a year of inactivity in the prize ring.

Ortiz has all the weapons.

Also, Northern California’s Jose Carlos Ramirez (28-1, 18 KOs) meets Cuba’s Rances Barthelemy (30-2-1, 15 KOs) in a welterweight affair set for 12 rounds.

It’s difficult to believe that former super lightweight titlist Ramirez has been written off by fans after only one loss. That was several years ago against Scotland’s Josh Taylor. One loss does not mean the end of a career.

“My goal is to get back on top and to get all those belts back. I still feel like I am one of the best 140-pounders in the division,” said Ramirez who lives in nearby Avenal, Calif.

An added major attraction features Marlen Esparza in a unification rematch against Gabriela “La Chucky” Alaniz for the WBA, WBC, WBO flyweight titles. Their first fight was

a controversial win by Esparza that saw one judge give her nine of 10 rounds in a very close fight. Those Texas judges.

In a match that could steal the show, Oscar Duarte (26-2-1, 21 KOs) faces former world champion Jojo Diaz (33-5-1, 15 KOs) in a lightweight match.

Munguia and Canelo

Don’t sleep on this match.

Its current Golden Boy fighter Jaime Munguia facing former Golden Boy fighter Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in a battle between Mexico’s greatest sluggers next week at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on May 4.

“I think Jaime Munguia is going to do something special in the ring,” said Oscar De La Hoya, the CEO for Golden Boy.

Tijuana’s Munguia showed up at the Wild Card Boxing gym in Hollywood where a throng of media from Mexico and the US met him.

Munguia looked confident and happy about his opportunity to fight great Canelo.

“It’s a hard fight,” said Munguia. “Truth is, its big for Mexico and not only for Mexicans but for boxing.”

Fights to Watch

Fri. DAZN 6 p.m. Yoeniz Tellez (7-0) vs Joseph Jackson (19-0).

Sat. DAZN 9:30 a.m. Peter McGrail (8-1) vs Marc Leach (18-3-1); Beatriz Ferreira (4-0) vs Yanina Del Carmen 14-3).

Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. Vergil Ortiz (20-0) vs Thomas Dulorme (26-6-1); Jose Carlos Ramirez (28-1) vs Rances Barthelemy (30-2-1); Marlen Esparza (14-1) vs Gabriela Alaniz (14-1).

Photo credit: Cris Esqueda / Golden Boy Promotions

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Ramon Cardenas Channels Micky Ward and KOs Eduardo Ramirez on ProBox

Published

2 days ago

April 24, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Ramon-Cardenas-Channels-Micky-Ward-and-KOs-Eduardo-Ramirez-on-ProBox

The Wednesday night bi-monthly series of fights on the ProBox TV platform is the best deal in boxing; the livestream is free with no strings attached! Tonight’s episode was headlined by a super bantamweight match between San Antonio’s Ramon Cardenas and Eduardo Ramirez who brought a caravan of rooters from his hometown in Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico.

Cardenas, coached by Joel Diaz, entered the contest ranked #4 by the WBA. He was expected to handle Ramirez with little difficulty, but this was a close, tactical fight through eight frames when lightning struck in the form of a left hook to the liver from Cardenas. Ramirez went down on one knee and wasn’t able to beat the count. It was as if Cardenas summoned the ghost of Micky Ward who had a penchant for terminating fights with the same punch that arrived out of the blue.

The official time was 1:37 of round nine. Cardenas improved to 25-1 with his14th win inside the distance. Ramirez, who was stopped in the opening round by Nick “Wrecking” Ball in London in his lone previous fight outside Mexico, falls to 23-3-3.

Co-Feature

In an upset, Tijuana super welterweight Damian Sosa won a split decision over previously undefeated Marques Valle, a local area fighter who was stepping up in class in his first 10-round go. Sosa was the aggressor, repeatedly backing his taller opponent into the ropes where Valle was unable to get good leverage behind his punches.

The 25-year-old Valle, managed by the influential David McWater, was the house fighter. This was his 10^th appearance in this building. He brought a 10-0 (7) record and was hoping to emulate the success of his younger brother Dominic Valle who scored a second-round stoppage of his opponent in this ring two weeks ago, improving to 9-0. But Sosa, who brought a 24-2 record, proved to be a bridge too high.

The judges had it 97-93 and 96-94 for the Tijuana invader and a disgraceful 98-92 for the house fighter.

Also

In a fight whose abrupt ending would be echoed by the main event, 34-year-old SoCal featherweight Ronny Rios, now training in Las Vegas, returned to the ring after a 22-month hiatus and scored a fifth-round stoppage over Nicolas Polanco of the Dominican Republic.

A three-punch combo climaxed by a left hook to the liver took the breath out of Polanco who slumped to his knees and was counted out. A two-time world title challenger, Rios advanced to 34-4 (17 KOs). Polanco, 34, declined to 21-6-1. The official time was 0:54 of round five.

—

The next ProBox show (Wednesday, May 8) will have an international cast with fighters from Kazakhstan, Japan, Mongolia, and the United Kingdom. In the main event, Liverpool’s Robbie Davies Jr will make his U.S. debut against the California-based Kazakh Sergey Lipinets.

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Haney-Garcia Redux with the Focus on Harvey Dock

Published

4 days ago

April 22, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Haney-Garcia-Redux-with-the-Focus-on-Harvey-Dock

Saturday’s skirmish between Ryan Garcia and WBC super lightweight champion Devin Haney was a messy affair, and yet a hugely entertaining fight fused with great drama. In the aftermath, Garcia and Haney were celebrated – the former for fooling all the experts and the latter for his gallant performance in a losing effort – but there were only brickbats for the third man in the ring, referee Harvey Dock.

Devin Haney was plainly ahead heading into the seventh frame when there was a sudden turnabout when Garcia put him on the canvas with his vaunted left hook. Moments later, Dock deducted a point from Garcia for a late punch coming out of a break. The deduction forced a temporary cease-fire that gave Haney a few precious seconds to regain his faculties. Before the round was over, Haney was on the deck twice more but these were ruled slips.

The deduction, which effectively negated the knockdown, struck many as too heavy-handed as Dock hadn’t previously issued a warning for this infraction. Moreover, many thought he could have taken a point away from Haney for excessive clinching. As for Haney’s second and third trips to the canvas in round seven, they struck this reporter – watching at home – as borderline, sufficient to give referee Dock the benefit of the doubt.

In a post-fight interview, Ryan Garcia faulted the referee for denying him the satisfaction of a TKO. “At the end of the day, Harvey Dock, I think he was tripping,” said Garcia. “He could have stopped that fight.”

Those that played the rounds proposition, placing their coin on the “under,” undoubtedly felt the same way.

The internet lit up with comments assailing Dock’s competence and/or his character. Some of the ponderings were whimsical, but they were swamped by the scurrilous screeching of dolts who find a conspiracy under every rock.

Stephen A. Smith, reputedly America’s highest-paid TV sports personality, was among those that felt a need to weigh-in: “This referee is absolutely terrible….Unreal! Horrible officiating,” tweeted Stephen A whose primary area of expertise is basketball.

Harvey Dock

Dock fought as an amateur and had one professional fight, winning a four-round decision over a fellow novice on a show at a non-gaming resort in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. He says that as an amateur he was merely average, but he was better than that, a New Jersey and regional amateur champion in 1993 and 1994 while a student New Jersey’s Essex County Community College where he majored in journalism.

A passionate fan of Sugar Ray Leonard, he started officiating amateur fights in 1998 and six years later, at age 32, had his first documented action at the professional level, working low-level cards in New Jersey. The top boxing referees, to a far greater extent than the top judges, had long apprenticeships, having worked their way up from the boonies and Dock is no exception.

Per boxrec, Haney vs Garcia was Harvey Dock’s 364^th assignment in the pros and his forty-second world title fight. Some of those title fights were title in name only, they weren’t even main events, but, bit by bit, more lucrative offerings started coming his way.

On May 13, 2023, Dock worked his first fights in Nevada, a 4-rounder and then a 12-rounder on a card at the Cosmopolitan topped by the 140-pound title fight between Rolly Romero and Ismael Barroso. It was the first time that this reporter got to watch Dock in the flesh.

Ironically (in hindsight), the card would be remembered for the actions of a referee, in this case Tony Weeks who handled the main event. Barroso was winning the fight on all three cards when Weeks stepped in and waived it off in the ninth round after Romero cornered Barroso against the ropes and let loose a barrage of punches, none of which landed cleanly. Few “premature stoppages” were ever as garishly, nay ghoulishly, premature.

With all the brickbats raining down on Weeks, I felt a need to tamp down the noise by diverting attention away from Tony Weeks and toward Harvey Dock and took to the TSS Forum to share my thoughts. Referencing the 12-rounder, a robust junior welterweight affair between Batyr Akhmedov and Kenneth Sims Jr, I noted that Dock’s Las Vegas debut went smoothly. He glided effortlessly around the ring, making him inconspicuous, the mark of a good referee. (This post ran on May 15, two days after the fight.)

Folks at the Nevada State Athletic Commission were also paying attention. Dock was back in Las Vegas the following week to referee the lightweight title fight between Devin Haney and Vasyl Lomachenko and before the year was out, he would be tabbed to referee the biggest non-heavyweight fight of the year, the July 29 match in Las Vegas between Terence Crawford and Errol Spence Jr.

The Haney-Garcia fight wasn’t Harvey Dock’s best hour, I’ll concede that, but a closer look at his full body of work informs us that he is an outstanding referee.

—

While the Haney-Garcia bout was in progress, WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman threw everyone a curve ball, tweeting on “X” that Devin Haney would keep his title if he lost the fight. Everyone, including the TV commentators, was under the impression that the title would become vacant in the event that Haney lost.

Sulaiman cited the precedent of Corrales-Castillo II.

FYI: The Corrales-Castillo rematch, originally scheduled for June 3, 2005 and aborted on the day prior when Castillo failed to make weight, finally came off on Oct. 8 of that year, notwithstanding the fact that Castillo failed to make weight once again, scaling three-and-a-half pounds above the lightweight limit. He knocked out Corrales in the fourth round with a left hook that Las Vegas Review-Journal boxing writer Kevin Iole, alluding to the movie “Blazing Saddles,” described as Mongo-esque (translation: the punch would have knocked out a horse). After initially insisting on a rubber match, which had scant chance of happening, WBC president Jose Sulaiman, Mauricio’s late father, ruled that Corrales could keep his title.

Whether or not you agree with Mauricio Sulaiman’s rationale, the timing of his announcement was certainly awkward.

Haney’s mandatory is Spanish southpaw Sandor Martin (42-3, 15 KOs), a cutie best known for his 2021 upset of Mikey Garcia. A bout between Haney and Martin has the earmarks of a dull fight.

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