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A New Book Publishing House Devoted to Boxing Clocks in with a Classic
A New Book Publishing House Devoted to Boxing Clocks in with a Classic
It goes without saying that these are perilous times for the print media industry. It wasn’t long ago that one could walk through an airport and find most folks sitting in the waiting rooms devouring a magazine, a book or a newspaper. Nowadays they are glued to their electronic device.
Many of America’s grand old book publishing houses have disappeared. They either closed down or, more likely, were swallowed up by one of the Big 5 (HarperCollins, Macmillan, Hatchette, Penguin Random House, and Simon and Schuster). But the publishing industry is far from dead. Vanity presses never went away and there has actually been a sharp surge in the number of niche publishers, a development fueled in large part by lower production costs.
Among the newbies is Hamilcar Publications, a small press in Boston that specializes in boxing. Their initial offering, released in October of last year, was a reissue of “Off the Ropes: The Ron Lyle Story” by Candace Toft. Then came the big enchilada, the first U.S. edition of Donald McRae’s “Dark Trade: Lost in Boxing.” Now up to 552 pages with the addition of a new chapter, McRae’s opus, originally published in 1997, has been hailed as one of the best boxing books of all time. There are 12 more titles in various stages of development, three of which will be released this year.
Hamilcar Publications www.hamilcarpubs.com was co-founded by Kyle Sarofeen and Andy Komack, former classmates — they have known each other since eighth grade – in the little seaport town of Rockport, Massachusetts. They have complementary skill sets. Sarofeen spent 15 years in the book publishing business, working in various capacities for several of the largest firms in the Boston area. He’s familiar with what he calls the carpentry of book manufacturing, the process by which a manuscript is turned into a book. Andy Komack’s background is in marketing and advertising. He was formerly affiliated with DraftKings.
Since their early teens, Kyle and Andy have followed boxing religiously. Both were big fans of Marvin Hagler.
Sarofeen subsequently became a fan of James Toney. That eventually led to his hookup with Donald McRae, a prolific writer with varied interests who has authored several more boxing books plus books about pioneering heart surgeon Christiaan Bernard and the famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, among others.
“Dark Trade” focuses on the boxing scene in the U.S. and the U.K. in the 1990s. McRae was granted unprecedented access to some of the leading fight personalities of the era and from these fraternizations he crafted deep and revealing profiles of such men as Mike Tyson, Roy Jones Jr, Chris Eubank, Michael Watson, Naseem Hamed, Oscar De La Hoya, Evander Holyfield, Bob Arum and Don King. But he became particularly close to James Toney and Toney’s resourceful mother Sherry who started a successful pie-making business in Ann Arbor, Michigan. If this book were a movie, it would be an ensemble piece in which James “Lights Out” Toney emerges as the lead character.
Kyle Sarofeen sent an e-mail to Donald McRae and received a warm reply. “We hit it off right away,” says Kyle, a rapport spurred by their mutual admiration for James Toney. Sarofeen would learn that “Dark Trade,” originally published by Mainstream and then acquired by Simon and Schuster, had never been released in the United States which was odd as many of the scenes take place in the U.S., mostly against the backdrop of the Las Vegas Strip, an adult arcade that McRae writes about with delicious perceptions.
Sarofeen and McRae were in concordance that the book needed a new chapter. What McRae delivered was a 49-page tailpiece that includes profiles of Floyd Mayweather Jr, Tyson Fury, and Carl Frampton plus return visits with such notables as Mike Tyson, the inspirational Michael Watson and, inevitably, his great friend James Toney. The reunion was awkward. In his early interviews with the boxer, Toney, says McRae, spoke “with a drawling, almost mumbling swagger,” but yet with clarity and wit. Now the words that came out of his mouth “sounded muffled and slurred. It became impossible to ignore the damage done to him by twenty-five years in the professional ring.”
The first edition of “Dark Trade” had Evander Holyfield on the cover. The Hamilcar edition, it was agreed, needed Toney on the cover and an artist, Amanda Kelley, was commissioned to paint his portrait. It depicts Toney with a slick, dark green hoodie, a portion of which slinks down over his left eye. Underneath his stoicism is an undercurrent of menace.
For all his fistic achievements, James Toney, a surefire Hall of Famer, remains a cult figure. Folks with no interest in boxing can identify Evander Holyfield. It’s doubtful that James Toney’s name would ring a bell. “And that’s the difference between us and a big publishing house,” Sarofeen told me. “The big houses are generalists. They would never put a James Toney on the cover.”
“Dark Trade,” noted an astute reviewer, is best read in pieces. Unfortunately, there is no index, not that one would have expected one from a non-fiction book that reads like a series of novellas.
In the Pipeline
The next book off the Hamilcar conveyor belt is a re-issue of British boxing writer Kevin Mitchell’s 2009 “Jacobs Beach: The Mob, the Garden, and the Golden Age of Boxing.” From that point on, the slate consists of previously unpublished works, starting with Don Stradley’s “Berserk,” a bio of Edwin Valero that Sarofeen calls a little masterpiece.
This will be a paperback that will be translated into Spanish for the Hispanic, Latino, and Argentine markets and will be the first salvo of a “Hamilcar Noir” series, a series of little books that cover the seamy side of boxing. Another book in the series, Patrick Connor’s “Shot at a Brothel,” is about the life of Oscar Bonavena. It has a tentative June 2020 release date. Also in the queue are works by Carlos Acevedo, Paul Zanon, Jimmy Tobin, Tris Dixon, Charles Farrell, Todd Snyder, and Christian Giudice among others.
A South Jersey native, fluent in Spanish, Giudice is best known for his biography of Roberto Duran, the template for the film “Hands of Stone.” The book, notes Kyle Sarofeen, sold considerably more in Great Britain than in the U.S. “That told us that something was going on (over there),” says Kyle, “in terms of the UK being a big market for us — which was something we expected but hadn’t recognized fully before then.”
Sarofeen is particularly enthused about Todd Snyder’s forthcoming book, a biography of Drew “Bundini” Brown, the street-wise Harlem curbstone philosopher who spent seven years with Sugar Ray Robinson before becoming Muhammad Ali’s loyal companion and hype man. Bundini is credited with giving Ali the line, “Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee.” Some recognize Ali as America’s first rapper.
Sarofeen, who had written about Bundini and knew that there were many layers to the man, chose Todd Snyder to write the book. Snyder is familiar with boxing – his father, a West Virginia coal miner, ran a boxing gym – and familiar with the world of hip-hop. At Siena College where he is an assistant professor of English, Snyder teaches a class where hip-hop lyrics are analyzed as if they were poetry.
Sarofeen thinks that the Bundini book, slated for release in the late summer or early fall of 2020, will have crossover appeal. How does a librarian classify it? Should it be shelved with the boxing books, or in the American Studies section, or perhaps with the books on African-American history?
Starting a book publishing company in this day and age where many of the established firms are scrambling to stay relevant in the face of massive technological shifts, will strike many as quixotic. However, Kyle Sarofeen and Andy Komack started this venture with their eyes wide open and no illusions about getting rich quick. For them, Hamilcar is a labor of love, a way of enriching the impressive body of literature that girds their favorite sport.
We wish them well.
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Two below-the-radar super welterweight stars show off their skills this weekend from different parts of Southern California.
One in particular, Charles Conwell, co-headlines a show in Oceanside against a hard-hitting Mexican while another super welter star Sadriddin Akhmedov faces another Mexican hitter in Commerce.
Take your pick.
The super welterweight division is loaded with talent at the moment. If Terence Crawford remained in the division he would be at the top of the class, but he is moving up several weight divisions.
Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) faces Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs) a tall knockout puncher from Los Mochis at the Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, Calif. on Saturday April 19. DAZN will stream the Golden Boy Promotions card that also features undisputed flyweight champion Gabriela Fundora. We’ll get to her later.
Conwell might be the best super welterweight out there aside from the big dogs like Vergil Ortiz, Serhii Bohachuk and Sebastian Fundora.
If you are not familiar with Conwell he comes from Cleveland, Ohio and is one of those fighters that other fighters know about. He is good.
He has the James “Lights Out” Toney kind of in-your-face-style where he anchors down and slowly deciphers the opponent’s tools and then takes them away piece by piece. Usually it’s systematic destruction. The kind you see when a skyscraper goes down floor by floor until it’s smoking rubble.
During the Covid days Conwell fought two highly touted undefeated super welters in Wendy Toussaint and Madiyar Ashkeyev. He stopped them both and suddenly was the boogie man of the super welterweight division.
Conwell will be facing Mexico’s taller Garcia who likes to trade blows as most Mexican fighters prefer, especially those from Sinaloa. These guys will be firing H bombs early.
Fundora
Co-headlining the Golden Boy card is Gabriela Fundora (15-0, 7 KOs) the undisputed flyweight champion of the world. She has all the belts and Mexico’s Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1, 3 KOs) wants them.
Gabriela Fundora is the sister of Sebastian Fundora who holds the men’s WBC and WBO super welterweight world titles. Both are tall southpaws with power in each hand to protect the belts they accumulated.
Six months ago, Fundora met Argentina’s Gabriela Alaniz in Las Vegas to determine the undisputed flyweight champion. The much shorter Alaniz tried valiantly to scrap with Fundora and ran into a couple of rocket left hands.
Mexico’s Badillo is an undefeated flyweight from Mexico City who has battled against fellow Mexicans for years. She has fought one world champion in Asley Gonzalez the current super flyweight world titlist. They met years ago with Badillo coming out on top.
Does Badillo have the skill to deal with the taller and hard-hitting Fundora?
When a fighter has a six-inch height advantage like Fundora, it is almost impossible to out-maneuver especially in two-minute rounds. Ask Alaniz who was nearly decapitated when she tried.
This will be Badillo’s first pro fight outside of Mexico.
Commerce Casino
Kazakhstan’s Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0, 13 KOs) is another dangerous punching super welterweight headlining a 360 Promotions card against Mexico’s Elias Espadas (23-6, 16 KOs) on Saturday at the Commerce Casino.
UFC Fight Pass will stream the 360 Promotions card of about eight bouts.
Akhmedov is another Kazakh puncher similar to the great Gennady “GGG” Golovkin who terrorized the middleweight division for a decade. He doesn’t have the same polish or dexterity but doesn’t lack pure punching power.
It’s another test for the super welterweight who is looking to move up the ladder in the very crowded 154-pound weight division. 360 Promotions already has a top contender in Ukraine’s Serhii Bohachuk who nearly defeated Vergil Ortiz a year ago.
Could Bohachuk and Akhmedov fight each other if nothing else materializes?
That’s a question for another day.
Fights to Watch
Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. Charles Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) vs. Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs); Gabriela Fundora (15-0) vs Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1).
Sat. UFC Fight Pass 6 p.m. Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0) vs Elias Espadas (23-6).
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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 11th 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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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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Bernard Fernandez Reflects on His Special Bond with George Foreman
A Paean to George Foreman (1949-2025), Architect of an Amazing Second Act
Spared Prison by a Lenient Judge, Chordale Booker Pursues a World Boxing Title
Sebastian Fundora TKOs Chordale Booker in Las Vegas
Boxing Odds and Ends: The Wacky and Sad World of Livingstone Bramble and More
Avila Perspective, Chap. 318: Aussie Action, Vegas and More
Avila Perspective, Chap. 319: Rematches in Las Vegas, Cancun and More
Ringside at the Fontainebleau where Mikaela Mayer Won her Rematch with Sandy Ryan
Results and Recaps from Sydney where George Kambosos Upended Late Sub Jake Wyllie
William Zepeda Edges Past Tevin Farmer in Cancun; Improves to 34-0
History has Shortchanged Freddie Dawson, One of the Best Boxers of his Era
Avila Perspective, Chap. 320: Women’s Boxing Hall of Fame, Heavyweights and More
Results and Recaps from Las Vegas where Richard Torrez Jr Mauled Guido Vianello
Filip Hrgovic Defeats Joe Joyce in Manchester
Weekend Recap and More with the Accent of Heavyweights
Remembering Hall of Fame Boxing Trainer Kenny Adams
Avila Perspective Chap 320: Boots Ennis and Stanionis
Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis Wins Welterweight Showdown in Atlantic City
Dzmitry Asanau Flummoxes Francesco Patera on a Ho-Hum Card in Montreal
Boxing Notes and Nuggets from Thomas Hauser
Avila Perspective, Chap. 322: Super Welter Week in SoCal
TSS Salutes Thomas Hauser and his Bernie Award Cohorts
Mekhrubon Sanginov, whose Heroism Nearly Proved Fatal, Returns on Saturday
Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis Wins Welterweight Showdown in Atlantic City
Boxing Notes and Nuggets from Thomas Hauser
Avila Perspective Chap 320: Boots Ennis and Stanionis
Dzmitry Asanau Flummoxes Francesco Patera on a Ho-Hum Card in Montreal
Remembering Hall of Fame Boxing Trainer Kenny Adams
Weekend Recap and More with the Accent of Heavyweights
Results and Recaps from Las Vegas where Richard Torrez Jr Mauled Guido Vianello
Filip Hrgovic Defeats Joe Joyce in Manchester
Avila Perspective, Chap. 320: Women’s Boxing Hall of Fame, Heavyweights and More
History has Shortchanged Freddie Dawson, One of the Best Boxers of his Era
Ringside at the Fontainebleau where Mikaela Mayer Won her Rematch with Sandy Ryan
William Zepeda Edges Past Tevin Farmer in Cancun; Improves to 34-0
Avila Perspective, Chap. 319: Rematches in Las Vegas, Cancun and More
Boxing Odds and Ends: The Wacky and Sad World of Livingstone Bramble and More
A Paean to George Foreman (1949-2025), Architect of an Amazing Second Act
Sebastian Fundora TKOs Chordale Booker in Las Vegas
Bernard Fernandez Reflects on His Special Bond with George Foreman
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