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Gervonta’s Baltimore Homecoming Awakens Echoes of Harry Jeffra

Seventy-nine years ago this coming Monday (July 29), Baltimore native Harry Jeffra successfully defended his featherweight title with a 15-round unanimous decision over Toronto’s Spider Armstrong. This match — refereed by The Ring magazine founder Nat Fleischer – is being recalled as the last world title fight held in the City of Monuments in which a local man defended his title….until tonight, that is, when Gervonta Davis defends his World Boxing Association Super World Super Featherweight Title (that’s a mouthful) on SHOWTIME in an apparent soft defense against Panama’s unheralded Ricardo Nunez.
Harry Jeffra was very good and had a legitimate claim to the world featherweight title, but as title fights go, Jeffra vs. Armstrong warrants an asterisk.
No, there weren’t four international bodies vying for supremacy, but things back then were just as muddled. When Jeffra entered the ring that night, he was one of three recognized featherweight champions. The National Boxing Association (forerunner of the WBA) recognized Petey Scalzo. The New York and Maryland (and eventually Pennsylvania and California) boxing commissions recognized Jeffra. The Louisiana commission was partial to Jimmy Perrin. And overseas? Well, let’s not go there.
Harry Jeffra, who was Sicilian on his father’s side, was born in Baltimore on Nov. 30, 1914. His birth name was Ignatius Guiffre. With a name like that, it was inevitable he would adopt a different ring name, but folks knew him as Harry Jeffra before he ever laced on a pair of gloves. The name was applied to him by his schoolteachers who couldn’t pronounce Guiffre.
Jeffra was born in the shadow of Baltimore’s Pimlico Racetrack and in some of his early fights was billed as the Pimlico Kid. Ironically, in retirement, after working as a jockey’s agent, Jeffra became a stable manager at the fabled racetrack.
Turning pro at age 18, Jeffra had his first 39 fights in Baltimore with the exception of four excursions to nearby Washington, DC. He attracted national notice late in this run with a 10-round split decision over Puerto Rico’s Sixto Escobar, the generally recognized world bantamweight champion.
Jeffra and Escobar would meet five times; Jeffra winning four. The third and fourth meetings were stamped as world title fights. The finale, in Baltimore, would be Escobar’s final pro bout.
Escobar-Jeffra III was staged on Sept. 23, 1937 at New York’s Polo Grounds as part of the “Carnival of Champions” in which four title-holders risked their belts on the same card. Lightweight Lou Ambers and welterweight Barney Ross prevailed against Pedro Montanez and Ceferino Garcia, respectively. Middleweight title-holder Marcel Thill was upended by Fred Apostoli, the San Francisco Bell Boy (although New York continued to recognize Freddie Steele; go figure) and Harry Jeffra got things started by dethroning Escobar, winning a lopsided 15-round decision. “He buzzed around him like an angry hornet in a fight that was full of action,” said the correspondent for the New York Times.
Promoter Mike Jacobs anticipated a crowd of 50,000, but the announced attendance was only 32,600. Many boxing fans hadn’t yet recovered from the Great Depression and all sorts of amusements were in the doldrums.
Five months later, the Baltimorean and the Puerto Rican met up again on Escobar’s turf in San Juan. In this bout, Jeffra bore scant resemblance to the fighter that won their three previous meetings. He was knocked down twice in the 11th and once in the 14th and finished the contest with both of his eyes nearly closed. The announced attendance at the outdoor show was 12,000, but promoter Mike Jacobs, a whiz at creative bookkeeping, claimed that the gate receipts totaled only $13,900.
Jeffra had struggled to make weight for Escobar IV. Seven months later he returned to the ring as a featherweight and after adding eight wins to his ledger was pitted against veteran Joey Archibald who held a share of the fractured featherweight title. It was the first defense for Archibald who had won the belt in his hometown of Providence, Rhode Island, with a 15-round decision over Chicago’s Leo Rodak.
Archibald was managed by wily Al Weill who later handled the ring affairs of Rocky Marciano. Washington, DC was Archibald’s second home. Prior to his Sept. 28, 1939 bout with Harry Jeffra at Griffith Stadium, he was 18-0 in DC rings.
The skein continued with Jeffra losing a split decision that nearly caused a riot. Spectators booed for a good 15 minutes after the verdict was announced and pelted the ring with debris. It was a harrowing experience for ring announcer Jimmy Lake who couldn’t leave his post as the semi-main had been pushed back to the walk-out fight.
Jeffra got his revenge eight months later in Baltimore. He nearly had Archibald out in the second round but the Providence man stayed the 15-round limit only to lose a lopsided decision. Jeffra’s first defense against the aforementioned Spider Armstrong would stand for almost 80 years as the last winning effort by a Baltimore world title-holder in a Baltimore ring. He gave back the belt in a third meeting with Joey Archibald, another disputed split decision at Griffith Stadium, although not as contentious as the first, and then failed in an attempt to regain the title when he was stopped in the 10th frame by Archibald’s conqueror Chalky Wright.
After losing to Wright, Jeffra soldiered on for a few more years before retiring at age 32. A short-lived and unproductive comeback after a 44-month absence dipped his final record to 94-20-7 (per BoxRec). Although the titles he held were in dispute at the time that he held them, he passes the lineal test as a two-division world champion. The late Hank Kaplan, who was considered the foremost historian of the Sweet Science, is among those who believed that Jeffra did enough to warrant inclusion in the Boxing Hall of Fame.
As a teenager, Jeffra, who stood five-foot-four, was a two-sport standout. He was so good on the links that he considered pursuing a career as a professional golfer. After retiring, he won several amateur tournaments.
In retirement, Harry Jeffra became very involved in local charities including the Baltimore branch of the Veteran Boxers Association. He developed an amusing schtick and was in demand as a public speaker on the rubber chicken circuit. With the money that he saved he was able to send all four of his children off to college.
For years after he quit he ring, Harry Jeffra had a large presence in his hometown. But he eventually faded from view. His name stopped bobbing up in the papers when Baltimore became a major league sports town. Major league baseball returned to Baltimore in 1953 when the St. Louis Browns moved here, taking the name of the city’s Triple-A franchise, the Orioles. That same year, Baltimore acquired an NFL franchise, the Colts. Professional boxing, so vibrant in Jeffra’s heyday with club shows every week, virtually ceased and the old-time boxers spawned by the city, even the best of them, became more obscure with each passing year. When Jeffra died in September of 1988 after a lingering illness, it took several weeks for the news to hit the papers.
Ah, but there was a time when the erstwhile Pimlico Kid was the toast of the town.
Gervonta
At age 24, Gervonta Davis is the youngest active American-born champion. Undefeated, he has stopped 20 of his 21 former opponents including the last 12. His life growing up in Baltimore was quite different from that of Harry Jeffra. There was no golf for him.
“As a tiny kid,” writes Corey McLaughlin in Baltimore magazine, “Davis often slept on the floor of his drug addicted parents’ house in possibly the roughest neighborhood in Baltimore City before going into foster care.” Nowadays, he can laugh about smashing up his $170,000 Ferrari in the first week that he owned it.
This past Wednesday, Davis was given the keys to the city of Baltimore by Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young in a ceremony at City Hall. In a city plagued by gang violence, the heavily tattooed boxer is being extolled as a role model, notwithstanding the fact that he has had several brushes with the law.
With the honor comes a responsibility, an obligation to give something back to his community. Harry Jeffra understood this. Now it’s Gervonta’s turn.
Gervonta photo by Amanda Westcott compliments of Showtime
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Arne’s Almanac: The First BWAA Dinner Was Quite the Shindig

The first annual dinner of the Boxing Writers Association of America was staged on April 25, 1926 in the grand ballroom of New York’s Hotel Astor, an edifice that rivaled the original Waldorf Astoria as the swankiest hotel in the city. Back then, the organization was known as the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York.
The ballroom was configured to hold 1200 for the banquet which was reportedly oversubscribed. Among those listed as agreeing to attend were the governors of six states (New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Maryland) and the mayors of 10 of America’s largest cities.
In 1926, radio was in its infancy and the digital age was decades away (and inconceivable). So, every journalist who regularly covered boxing was a newspaper and/or magazine writer, editor, or cartoonist. And at this juncture in American history, there were plenty of outlets for someone who wanted to pursue a career as a sportswriter and had the requisite skills to get hired.
The following papers were represented at the inaugural boxing writers’ dinner:
New York Times
New York News
New York World
New York Sun
New York Journal
New York Post
New York Mirror
New York Telegram
New York Graphic
New York Herald Tribune
Brooklyn Eagle
Brooklyn Times
Brooklyn Standard Union
Brooklyn Citizen
Bronx Home News
This isn’t a complete list because a few of these papers, notably the New York World and the New York Journal, had strong afternoon editions that functioned as independent papers. Plus, scribes from both big national wire services (Associated Press and UPI) attended the banquet and there were undoubtedly a smattering of scribes from papers in New Jersey and Connecticut.
Back then, the event’s organizer Nat Fleischer, sports editor of the New York Telegram and the driving force behind The Ring magazine, had little choice but to limit the journalistic component of the gathering to writers in the New York metropolitan area. There wasn’t a ballroom big enough to accommodate a good-sized response if he had extended the welcome to every boxing writer in North America.
The keynote speaker at the inaugural dinner was New York’s charismatic Jazz Age mayor James J. “Jimmy” Walker, architect of the transformative Walker Law of 1920 which ushered in a new era of boxing in the Empire State with a template that would guide reformers in many other jurisdictions.
Prizefighting was then associated with hooligans. In his speech, Mayor Walker promised to rid the sport of their ilk. “Boxing, as you know, is closest to my heart,” said hizzoner. “So I tell you the police force is behind you against those who would besmirch or injure boxing. Rowdyism doesn’t belong in this town or in your game.” (In 1945, Walker would be the recipient of the Edward J. Neil Memorial Award given for meritorious service to the sport. The oldest of the BWAA awards, the previous recipients were all active or former boxers. The award, no longer issued under that title, was named for an Associated Press sportswriter and war correspondent who died from shrapnel wounds covering the Spanish Civil War.)
Another speaker was well-traveled sportswriter Wilbur Wood, then affiliated with the Brooklyn Citizen. He told the assembly that the aim of the organization was two-fold: to help defend the game against its detractors and to promote harmony among the various factions.
Of course, the 1926 dinner wouldn’t have been as well-attended without the entertainment. According to press dispatches, Broadway stars and performers from some of the city’s top nightclubs would be there to regale the attendees. Among the names bandied about were vaudeville superstars Sophie Tucker and Jimmy Durante, the latter of whom would appear with his trio, Durante, (Lou) Clayton, and (Eddie) Jackson.
There was a contraction of New York newspapers during the Great Depression. Although empirical evidence is lacking, the inaugural boxing writers dinner was likely the largest of its kind. Fifteen years later, in 1941, the event drew “more than 200” according to a news report. There was no mention of entertainment.
In 1950, for the first time, the annual dinner was opened to the public. For $25, a civilian could get a meal and mingle with some of his favorite fighters. Sugar Ray Robinson was the Edward J. Neil Award winner that year, honored for his ring exploits and for donating his purse from the Charlie Fusari fight to the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund.
There was no formal announcement when the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York was re-christened the Boxing Writers Association of America, but by the late 1940s reporters were referencing the annual event as simply the boxing writers dinner. By then, it had become traditional to hold the annual affair in January, a practice discontinued after 1971.
The winnowing of New York’s newspaper herd plus competing banquets in other parts of the country forced Nat Fleischer’s baby to adapt. And more adaptations will be necessary in the immediate future as the future of the BWAA, as it currently exists, is threatened by new technologies. If the forthcoming BWAA dinner (April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in mid-Manhattan) were restricted to wordsmiths from the traditional print media, the gathering would be too small to cover the nut and the congregants would be drawn disproportionately from the geriatric class.
Some of those adaptations have already started. Last year, Las Vegas resident Sean Zittel, a recent UNLV graduate, had the distinction of becoming the first videographer welcomed into the BWAA. With more and more people getting their news from sound bites, rather than the written word, the videographer serves an important function.
The reporters who conducted interviews with pen and paper have gone the way of the dodo bird and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A taped interview for a “talkie” has more integrity than a story culled from a paper and pen interview because it is unfiltered. Many years ago, some reporters, after interviewing the great Joe Louis, put words in his mouth that made him seem like a dullard, words consistent with the Sambo stereotype. In other instances, the language of some athletes was reconstructed to the point where the reader would think the athlete had a second job as an English professor.
The content created by videographers is free from that bias. More of them will inevitably join the BWAA and similar organizations in the future.
Photo: Nat Fleischer is flanked by Sugar Ray Robinson and Tony Zale at the 1947 boxing writers dinner.
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Gabriela Fundora KOs Marilyn Badillo and Perez Upsets Conwell in Oceanside

It was just a numbers game for Gabriela Fundora and despite Mexico’s Marilyn Badillo’s elusive tactics it took the champion one punch to end the fight and retain her undisputed flyweight world title by knockout on Saturday.
Will it be her last flyweight defense?
Though Fundora (16-0, 8 KOs) fired dozens of misses, a single punch found Badillo (19-1-1, 3 KOs) and ended her undefeated career and first attempt at a world title at the Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, California.
Fundora, however, proves unbeatable at flyweight.
The champion entered the arena as the headliner for the Golden Boy Promotion show and stepped through the ropes with every physical advantage possible, including power.
Mexico’s Badillo was a midget compared to Fundora but proved to be as elusive as a butterfly in a menagerie for the first six rounds. As the six-inch taller Fundora connected on one punch for every dozen thrown, that single punch was a deadly reminder.
Badillo tried ducking low and slipping to the left while countering with slashing uppercuts, she found little success. She did find the body a solid target but the blows proved to be useless. And when Badillo clinched, that proved more erroneous as Fundora belted her rapidly during the tie-ups.
“She was kind of doing her ducking thing,” said Fundora describing Badillo’s defensive tactics. “I just put the pressure on. It was just like a train. We didn’t give her that break.”
The Mexican fighter tried valiantly with various maneuvers. None proved even slightly successful. Fundora remained poised and under control as she stalked the challenger.
In the seventh round Badillo seemed to take a stand and try to slug it out with Fundora. She quickly was lit up by rapid left crosses and down she went at 1:44 of the seventh round. The Mexican fighter’s corner wisely waved off the fight and referee Rudy Barragan stopped the fight and held the dazed Badillo upright.
Once again Fundora remained champion by knockout. The only question now is will she move up to super flyweight or bantamweight to challenge the bigger girls.
Perez Beats Conwell.
Mexico’s Jorge “Chino” Perez (33-4, 26 KOs) upset Charles Conwell (21-1, 15 KOs) to win by split decision after 12 rounds in their super welterweight showdown.
It was a match that paired two hard-hitting fighters whose ledgers brimmed with knockouts, but neither was able to score a knockdown against each other.
Neither fighter moved backward. It was full steam ahead with Conwell proving successful to the body and head with left hooks and Perez connecting with rights to the head and body. It was difficult to differentiate the winner.
Though Conwell seemed to be the superior defensive fighter and more accurate, two judges preferred Perez’s busier style. They gave the fight to Perez by 115-113 scores with the dissenter favoring Conwell by the same margin.
It was Conwell’s first pro loss. Maybe it will open doors for more opportunities.
Other Bouts
Tristan Kalkreuth (15-1) managed to pass a serious heat check by unanimous decision against former contender Felix Valera (24-8) after a 10-round back-and-forth heavyweight fight.
It was very close.
Kalkreuth is one of those fighters that possess all the physical tools including youth and size but never seems to be able to show it. Once again he edged past another foe but at least this time he faced an experienced fighter in Valera.
Valera had his moments especially in the middle of the 10-round fight but slowed down during the last three rounds.
One major asset for Kalkreuth was his chin. He got caught but still motored past the clever Valera. After 10 rounds two judges saw it 99-91 and one other judge 97-93 all for Kalkreuth.
Highly-rated prospect Ruslan Abdullaev (2-0) blasted past dangerous Jino Rodrigo (13- 5-2) in an eight round super lightweight fight. He nearly stopped the very tough Rodrigo in the last two rounds and won by unanimous decision.
Abdullaev is trained by Joel and Antonio Diaz in Indio.
Bakersfield prospect Joel Iriarte (7-0, 7 KOs) needed only 1:44 to knock out Puerto Rico’s Marcos Jimenez (25-12) in a welterweight bout.
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‘Krusher’ Kovalev Exits on a Winning Note: TKOs Artur Mann in his ‘Farewell Fight’

At his peak, former three-time world light heavyweight champion Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev ranked high on everyone’s pound-for-pound list. Now 42 years old – he turned 42 earlier this month – Kovalev has been largely inactive in recent years, but last night he returned to the ring in his hometown of Chelyabinsk, Russia, and rose to the occasion in what was billed as his farewell fight, stopping Artur Mann in the seventh frame.
Kovalev hit his peak during his first run as a world title-holder. He was 30-0-1 (26 KOs) entering first match with Andre Ward, a mark that included a 9-0 mark in world title fights. The only blemish on his record was a draw that could have been ruled a no-contest (journeyman Grover Young was unfit to continue after Kovalev knocked down in the second round what with was deemed an illegal rabbit punch). Among those nine wins were two stoppages of dangerous Haitian-Canadian campaigner Jean Pascal and a 12-round shutout over Bernard Hopkins.
Kovalev’s stature was not diminished by his loss to the undefeated Ward. All three judges had it 114-113, but the general feeling among the ringside press was that Sergey nicked it.
The rematch was also somewhat controversial. Referee Tony Weeks, who halted the match in the eighth stanza with Kovalev sitting on the lower strand of ropes, was accused of letting Ward get away with a series of low blows, including the first punch of a three-punch series of body shots that culminated in the stoppage. Sergey was wobbled by a punch to the head earlier in the round and was showing signs of fatigue, but he was still in the fight. Respected judge Steve Weisfeld had him up by three points through the completed rounds.
Sergey Kovalev was never the same after his second loss to Andre Ward, albeit he recaptured a piece of the 175-pound title twice, demolishing Vyacheslav Shabranskyy for the vacant WBO belt after Ward announced his retirement and then avenging a loss to Eleider Alvarez (TKO by 7) with a comprehensive win on points in their rematch.
Kovalev’s days as a title-holder ended on Nov. 2, 2019 when Canelo Alvarez, moving up two weight classes to pursue a title in a fourth weight division, stopped him in the 11th round, terminating what had been a relatively even fight with a hellacious left-right combination that left Krusher so discombobulated that a count was superfluous.
That fight went head-to-head with a UFC fight in New York City. DAZN, to their everlasting discredit, opted to delay the start of Canelo-Kovalev until the main event of the UFC fight was finished. The delay lasted more than an hour and Kovalev would say that he lost his psychological edge during the wait.
Kovalev had two fights in the cruiserweight class between his setback to Canelo and last night’s presumptive swan song. He outpointed Tervel Pulev in Los Angeles and lost a 10-round decision to unheralded Robin Sirwan Safar in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Artur Mann, a former world title challenger – he was stopped in three rounds by Mairis Briedis in 2021 when Briedis was recognized as the top cruiserweight in the world – was unexceptional, but the 34-year-old German, born in Kazakhstan, wasn’t chopped liver either, and Kovalev’s stoppage of him will redound well to the Russian when he becomes eligible for the Boxing Hall of Fame.
Krusher almost ended the fight in the second round. He knocked Mann down hard with a short left hand and seemingly scored another knockdown before the round was over (but it was ruled a slip). Mann barely survived the round.
In the next round, a punch left Mann with a bad cut on his right eyelid, but the German came to fight and rounds three, four and five were competitive.
Kovalev had a good sixth round although there were indications that he was tiring. But in the seventh he got a second wind and unleashed a right-left combination that rolled back the clock to the days when he was one of the sport’s most feared punchers. Mann went down hard and as he staggered to his feet, his corner signaled that the fight should be stopped and the referee complied. The official time was 0:49 of round seven. It was the 30th KO for Kovalev who advanced his record to 36-5-1.
Addendum: History informs us that Farewell Fights have a habit of becoming redundant, by which we mean that boxers often get the itch to fight again after calling it quits. Have we seen the last of Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev? We woudn’t bet on it.
The complete Kovalev-Mann fight card was live-streamed on the Boxing News youtube channel.
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