Now Comes The Hard Part for Evan Holyfield

Published

6 years ago

July 25, 2019

Now comes the hard part for Evan Holyfield, son of renowned Evander Holyfield, who met with the media on Wednesday at the Fighter Nation Boxing Gym in Houston to announce he was following in his father’s footsteps by becoming a professional prizefighter.

“This is all really surreal for me,” admitted Holyfield. “It’s a blessing for sure because not everybody gets this kind of opportunity.”

The middle of the eleven Holyfield children, Holyfield, 21, certainly has some work cut out for him if he hopes to breach his father’s large shadow. That’s because Evan’s dad (who was not in attendance) won a bronze medal in the light heavyweight division at the 1984 Olympics, became the first-ever undisputed cruiserweight champion in 1988 and, if all that wasn’t enough, captured the heavyweight championship of the world four different times starting in 1990, sharing the ring with Hall of Fame heavyweight greats like George Foreman, Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis along the way.

Can you imagine trying to live up to something like that?

While Holyfield said he was grateful for the positive impact his father’s legacy had in helping him kick off his own professional campaign, he also correctly noted that at the end of his fighting career he’d only be judged by his own accomplishments. Still, it was probably nice to get this kind of sendoff, the type that only happens when people care about who your father is.

“It’s all about making it count,” said Holyfield. “That’s what matters at the end of the day.”

Standing just over six-feet-one-inches tall, Holyfield, a junior middleweight prospect, is described as a boxer-puncher with lightning-fast speed and hard-hitting power. Holyfield, who moved to Houston in February, was 70-15 in the amateur system where he competed while he was living in Georgia. The highlight of those endeavors was reaching the regional semi-finals during the 2018 Team USA western qualifying tournament.

Not Evander. But not bad.

Holyfield signed with Main Events, the same promotional company that his father signed with after turning professional in 1984. Main Events, which is based out of New Jersey, was founded in 1978 by the late Dan Duva and is now helmed by Kathy Duva, who has led the company as CEO since her husband’s passing in 1996.

Duva said signing Evan Holyfield was a complete surprise, something she described as the “closing of a circle.” She said she never really expected it to happen but that she was very excited about promoting the new Holyfield’s career. She also stressed there was much more to her company’s decision than just the fighter’s last name.

“We’ve never signed a famous fighter’s son before,” said Duva. “Even the sons of the fighters we had before that have come along, we never saw one that I looked at and saw what I see here.”

Holyfield seemed excited to start his professional career with such raucous fanfare, and there was plenty of it to be excited about. There was a good crowd on hand, much more than any other recent boxing press events in Houston for any fighter not yet toting a world title around his waist (and even some that do). The happy throng of onlookers included local Houston celebrities, high profile mainstream sports media people, local boxing gym supporters and, of course, a vocal group of general boxing fans.

“I’m really blessed to have this happen to me, and I’m really grateful to Ms. Duva for taking a chance on me,” said Holyfield, who genuinely seemed humbled by it all.

While Duva admitted her fighter’s first foray into the limelight would be much more about his father than it should be, she said her team fully expects their new signee to make a name for himself in his own right soon.

“Until he gets into the ring and fights, his father is going to be a big part of the story,” said Duva. “But once he starts to fight, we can talk more and more about him.”

Duva said her new Holyfield would be able to carry the burden of his father’s legacy just about as well as anyone might, but that it was more about what kind of person he was on the inside over anything on the exterior.

“It’s not just the amazing athletic ability,” said Duva. “It’s the same kind of drive that I saw in the great fighters that I’ve worked with before, both his father and many others, including Sergey Kovalev.”

Holyfield’s team is rounded out by two other people with ties to the original Holyfield. Tabbed to be Holyfield’s manager and trainer is local Houston boxing fixture Maurice “Termite” Watkins, a former world title challenger who got his nickname because of his family’s exterminator business.

After retiring from professional boxing in 1990, Walkins went back into the family business where he worked as a fumigator. He was later contracted by the U.S. military to do some fumigation work in Iraq after the 2003 U.S. invasion left the country in need of repair.

While there, Watkins was also assigned to get Iraq’s Olympic boxing team ready for the 2004 Olympics. Overall, he trained nine Iraqi fighters across various amateur tournaments in the region and ultimately guided one of the hopefuls, light flyweight Najah Ali, to the 2004 Olympics in Athens.

Today, Watkins focuses on serving the local community. “We help keep kids out of gangs,” said Watkins. “If you know anything about gangs, it’s blood in, blood out. We’ve been successful on just a handful, but that’s a handful that survived, isn’t in prison or dead.”

Holyfield’s team also includes Tim Hallmark, one of the sporting world’s most celebrated strength and conditioning coaches over the last 35 years, a man probably best-known as the fitness guru who helped Evander Holyfield successfully navigate his amazingly chiseled physique from the cruiserweight to the heavyweight division.

Holyfield, Duva, Watkins and Hallmark were all on stage together, beaming with smiles about the task at hand. Also on stage was Holyfield’s mother, Toi Irvin, and the Texas Commission of Licensing and Regulation Chair Rick Figueroa.

In short, if Evan Holyfield doesn’t make it as a professional fighter, it won’t be because he didn’t have a really strong team around him. If anything, Holyfield was essentially just shot out of a cannon on Wednesday, from the general obscurity of being just one of the many Holyfield children with similar-sounding names to being the one that takes a shot at carrying on the Holyfield name in the business that made it famous.

And with all that hoopla, with Duva promising to keep him busy and active locally, with Watkins saying he had final say in who his fighter would fight and that he only wanted real fights against good opponents, with the lean, mean Hallmark machine standing tall next to him like a silent gray-haired sentinel, but one that could probably smash a walnut with just one pinky if he really had to do it…well, Evan Holyfield appeared pretty calm in all that.

It was as if he was standing right where he was always intended to be. That isn’t everything, but it certainly is something.

“I’m still just processing all this, to be honest,” said Holyfield. “Nothing like this has ever really happened to me. I’ve always thought about this day happening, and it’s just a really great thing for it to finally be here.”

Now, of course, comes that hard part.

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 322: Super Welter Week in SoCal

Published

3 hours ago

April 18, 2025

David A. Avila

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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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TSS Salutes Thomas Hauser and his Bernie Award Cohorts

Published

2 days ago

April 16, 2025

TSS Press

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The Boxing Writers Association of America has announced the winners of its annual Bernie Awards competition. The awards, named in honor of former five-time BWAA president and frequent TSS contributor Bernard Fernandez, recognize outstanding writing in six categories as represented by stories published the previous year.

Over the years, this venerable website has produced a host of Bernie Award winners. In 2024, Thomas Hauser kept the tradition alive. A story by Hauser that appeared in these pages finished first in the category “Boxing News Story.” Titled “Ryan Garcia and the New York State Athletic Commission,” the story was published on June 23. You can read it HERE.

Hauser also finished first in the category of “Investigative Reporting” for “The Death of Ardi Ndembo,” a story that ran in the (London) Guardian. (Note: Hauser has owned this category. This is his 11^th first place finish for “Investigative Reporting”.)

Thomas Hauser, who entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the class of 2019, was honored at last year’s BWAA awards dinner with the A.J. Leibling Award for Outstanding Boxing Writing. The list of previous winners includes such noted authors as W.C. Heinz, Budd Schulberg, Pete Hamill, and George Plimpton, to name just a few.

The Leibling Award is now issued intermittently. The most recent honorees prior to Hauser were Joyce Carol Oates (2015) and Randy Roberts (2019).

Roberts, a Distinguished Professor of History at Purdue University, was tabbed to write the Hauser/Leibling Award story for the glossy magazine for BWAA members published in conjunction with the organization’s annual banquet. Regarding Hauser’s most well-known book, his Muhammad Ali biography, Roberts wrote, “It is nearly impossible to overestimate the importance of the book to our understanding of Ali and his times.” An earlier book by Hauser, “The Black Lights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing,” garnered this accolade: “Anyone who wants to understand boxing today should begin by reading ‘The Black Lights’.”

A panel of six judges determined the Bernie Award winners for stories published in 2024. The stories they evaluated were stripped of their bylines and other identifying marks including the publication or website for which the story was written.

Other winners:

Boxing Event Coverage: Tris Dixon

Boxing Column: Kieran Mulvaney

Boxing Feature (Over 1,500 Words): Lance Pugmire

Boxing Feature (Under 1,500 Words): Chris Mannix

The Dixon, Mulvaney, and Pugmire stories appeared in Boxing Scene; the Mannix story in Sports Illustrated.

The Bernie Award recipients will be honored at the forthcoming BWAA dinner on April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in the heart of Times Square. (For more information, visit the BWAA website). Two days after the dinner, an historic boxing tripleheader will be held in Times Square, the logistics of which should be quite interesting. Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney, and Teofimo Lopez share top billing.

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Mekhrubon Sanginov, whose Heroism Nearly Proved Fatal, Returns on Saturday

Published

3 days ago

April 15, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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To say that Mekhrubon Sanginov is excited to resume his boxing career would be a great understatement. Sanginov, ranked #9 by the WBA at 154 pounds before his hiatus, last fought on July 8, 2022.

He was in great form before his extended leave, having scored four straight fast knockouts, advancing his record to 13-0-1. Had he remained in Las Vegas, where he had settled after his fifth pro fight, his career may have continued on an upward trajectory, but a trip to his hometown of Dushanbe, Tajikistan, turned everything haywire. A run-in with a knife-wielding bully nearly cost him his life, stalling his career for nearly three full years.

Sanginov was exiting a restaurant in Dushanbe when he saw a man, plainly intoxicated, harassing another man, an innocent bystander. Mekhrubon intervened and was stabbed several times with a long knife. One of the puncture wounds came perilously close to puncturing his heart.

“After he stabbed me, I ran after him and hit him and caught him to hold for the police,” recollects Sanginov. “There was a lot of confusion when the police arrived. At first, the police were not certain what had happened.

“By the time I got to the hospital, I had lost two liters of blood, or so I was told. After I was patched up, one of the surgeons said to me, ‘Give thanks to God because he gave you a second life.’ It is like I was born a second time.”

“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have happened in any city,” he adds. (A story about the incident on another boxing site elicited this comment from a reader: “Good man right there. World would be a better place if more folk were willing to step up when it counts.”)

Sanginov first laced on a pair of gloves at age 10 and was purportedly 105-14 as an amateur. Growing up, the boxer he most admired was Roberto Duran. “Muhammad Ali will always be the greatest and [Marvin] Hagler was great too, but Duran was always my favorite,” he says.

During his absence from the ring, Sanginov married a girl from Tajikistan and became a father. His son Makhmud was born in Las Vegas and has dual citizenship. “Ideally,” he says, “I would like to have three more children. Two more boys and the last one a daughter.”

He also put on a great deal of weight. When he returned to the gym, his trainer Bones Adams was looking at a cruiserweight. But gradually the weight came off – “I had to give up one of my hobbies; I love to eat,” he says – and he will be resuming his career at 154. “Although I am the same weight as before, I feel stronger now. Before I was more of a boy, now I am a full-grown man,” says Sanginov who turned 29 in February.

He has a lot of rust to shed. Because of all those early knockouts, he has answered the bell for only eight rounds in the last four years. Concordantly, his comeback fight on Saturday could be described as a soft re-awakening. Sanginov’s opponent Mahonri Montes, an 18-year pro from Mexico, has a decent record (36-10-2, 25 KOs) but has been relatively inactive and is only 1-3-1 in his last five. Their match at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, California, is slated for eight rounds.

On May 10, Ardreal Holmes (17-0) faces Erickson Lubin (26-2) on a ProBox card in Kissimmee, Florida. It’s an IBF super welterweight title eliminator, meaning that the winner (in theory) will proceed directly to a world title fight.

Sanginov will be watching closely. He and Holmes were scheduled to meet in March of 2022 in the main event of a ShoBox card on Showtime. That match fell out when Sanginov suffered an ankle injury in sparring.

If not for a twist of fate, that may have been Mekhrubon Sanginov in that IBF eliminator, rather than Ardreal Holmes. We will never know, but one thing we do know is that Mekhrubon’s world title aspirations were too strong to be ruined by a knife-wielding bully.

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