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Mark Kram Jr, Author of a New Bio of Joe Frazier, Pays Homage to his Father
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Mark Kram Jr, Author of a New Bio of Joe Frazier, Pays Homage to his Father
When it comes to writing about sports, the Kram duo, father and son, have produced many notable works.
The late Mark Kram, whose byline ran in Sports Illustrated from the mid-1960s through the late-1970s, delivered some of the most melodic prose this side of Red Smith.
His son has followed in his footsteps. Known as a longform specialist and a columnist, Mark Kram Jr. is also the author of several books. “Like Any Normal Day: A Story of Devotion,” won the 2013 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing, and he is the author of the recently-released biography, “Smokin’ Joe: The Life of Joe Frazier.”
Having a successful father can sometimes be daunting for the offspring. Has the last name opened more doors than it’s closed?
“It’s been far more of a help than a hindrance,” Kram Jr. (pictured) said in an e-mail. “Of course, we shared the same byline for years while I worked in newspapers. That led to some awkwardness. Understandably, people would call thinking I was him. When I began writing for Philadelphia magazine in the 1990s, I adopted “Jr.” to clarify who was who.
Technically, I am not a “Jr.” He changed his name from “George” to “Mark” three years after I was born in 1956, when he started covering high school sports for the Baltimore Sun.”
Kram Jr., whose efforts have appeared in “The Best American Sports Writing” series and in “The Great American Sports Page: A Century of Classic Columns From Ring Lardner to Sally Jenkins,” an anthology edited and selected by John Schulian, said that although his father made an impact in journalism, it didn’t necessarily propel him into the business.
“Not particularly,” he said of his ultimate career choice. “When it came to writing, I was very much a late bloomer, as Dad himself had been. He neither encouraged nor discouraged me. When I got to college at the University of Maryland, I told myself that if I could learn to write while I was there, it would be a skill that could keep me gainfully employed in the years to come. So I began working for the college newspaper. But like Dad, I was more or less self-taught.”
The elder Kram passed away in 2002 at age 69. That he accomplished what he did is remarkable, given where he began.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, on December 6, 1932, Mark Kram wasn’t blessed with a silver spoon in his mouth. Books and high-brow literature weren’t laying around the house. The Daily Racing Form and tout sheets were.
Kram was a three-sport athlete in high school who went on to play minor league baseball. His hopes of playing in the big leagues were dashed when he was beaned. He was drafted into the military in 1953 and spent a very short period of time at the University of Georgia.
Kram would find work at Sports Illustrated where he became one of its rising stars.
Boxing was Kram’s primary beat and it coincided with the time Muhammad Ali, along with Joe Frazier and George Foreman, dominated the heavyweight division.
“Well, he came along during a period that is looked upon now as the golden age of Sports Illustrated,” said Kram Jr. “For a young man who had finished tenth from the bottom of his high school class and had no college to speak of, he was on a very fast track when he got to New York in 1964. But he worked very hard to develop his skills and just became better and better.”
Kram Jr. went on: “Along with his boxing pieces, he took on an array of off-beat bonus pieces that enabled him to grow artistically,” he said. “I remember he told me he once had lunch with Joseph Mitchell, the legendary New Yorker writer. Dad was interested in moving over to the New Yorker. Mitchell told him, “That can be arranged. But why would you want to? Everything is happening where you are.”
On some level, it may appear that writing is something that anyone can do. Maybe? But it’s another matter to write well.
“Dad used to say he was as fast as he had to be. For Ali-Frazier I and II, he had an hour to write his stories and he did it,” said Kram Jr., who was a senior writer for the Philadelphia Daily News from 1987 through 2013. “When he was working on something longer, he tended to bleed over every comma. At his office at Sports Illustrated, he would type a few lines, get up and pace the halls, thinking.”
Kram Jr. continued: “As he walked, he would puff on his pipe. By the time he was finished writing, the back of his shirt would be soaked with sweat. Remember, he worked on a typewriter as opposed to a computer screen, which is an inherently slower process. Even so, it would never have come easy for him, just as it would never become easy for me.”
The elder Kram’s piece de resistance was his Sports Illustrated story on Ali-Frazier III filed on deadline from Manila. Titled “Lawdy, Lawdy, He’s Great” (those words were uttered by Frazier about Ali after his trainer Eddie Futch threw in the towel just before the start of the 15th round), it ran as the S.I. cover story on Oct. 13, 1975 and was later expanded into a book, “Ghosts of Manila: The Fateful Blood Feud Between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.”
What prompted Kram Jr., who was also employed at the Detroit Free Press and the Baltimore News American, to write his two books?
“The appeal of that story to me,” he said, referencing his first book, “was how ordinary people found themselves caught up in extraordinary circumstances. The principal subject of the story, Buddy Miley, had severed his spinal cord in a high school [football] game in 1973. I interviewed him for the Philadelphia Daily News in early 1993. He had lived as a quadriplegic for 20 years, his every need seen to by his mother Rosemarie at their suburban Philadelphia home.”
Kram Jr. added: “Four years later after I wrote about him, he was found dead in a Michigan motel room. He had been assisted in his suicide by Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Buddy had talked his younger brother, Jimmy Miley, into taking him to Michigan in what would become an act of complicated love,” he said. “Fearing reprisals from the authorities, Jimmy had kept his role to himself until he sat down with me for a piece in 2006. The story ended up on HBO Real Sports and would become the foundation for the book I would publish in the spring of 2012.”
Kram Jr. added: “‘Like Any Normal Day’ enlarged the struggles of a heretofore anonymous family into something universal. If you looked hard enough at the characters in the book, you could see yourself in one of them. In “Smokin’ Joe: The Life of Joe Frazier,” I was with characters who were just the opposite. Frazier was internationally known. The challenge for me was to bring to his life a certain degree of intimacy.”
Regarding his father’s famous story, this is what Richard Deitsch, a longtime Sports Illustrated writer and current scribe at The Athletic, tweeted on June 4, 2016, the day after Ali passed away at age 74. “I consider this Mark Kram piece on Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier the best piece in the history of @SI.com.”
“Simply, it is a lovely piece of skillful writing,” said Kram Jr. “The opening sequence of it is haunting; Ali and Frazier had placed their bodies on the line, had given every ounce of their resolve, and now they were both exhausted and battered. From there, the story shifts perspective and point of view almost line by line; you can feel the energy in it building to a crescendo. Reflecting upon it as a piece of event reporting, a Sports Illustrated editor called it ‘the apotheosis of the form’. I would agree.”
There is a link between father and son when it comes to Frazier. It seems that because of Ali’s towering presence, Frazier has been somewhat overlooked.
“Is he? I think you have to judge athletes in the context of their era,” Kram Jr. pointed out. “To my way of thinking, the 1960s and early 1970s were the golden age of heavyweights. The talent pool was very, very deep. Frazier was on the smallish side for a heavyweight – far smaller than his chief rivals, Ali and Foreman – yet he was the consummate overachiever who never backed up an inch. Though Ali and Foreman both beat him twice, he acquitted himself with courage even in defeat. I have no idea how he would have fared against Jack Dempsey or Joe Louis or Rocky Marciano. No one else does either.”
Father and son are wonderful story tellers. What makes one so? “Curiosity; the desire to tug at loose threads until you come across one that leads somewhere intriguing; the ability to subordinate yourself to the subject you are writing about,” Kram Jr. said. “Nothing gets me to put a story down faster than the overuse of the first person. Generally, your presence in a piece of writing should be felt, not seen.”
Kram Jr. added: “Plus – and this is paramount – you have to have patience, the willingness to take the necessary time to get something the way it should be. There is a sign I keep over my desk that says ‘Things of Quality Have No Fear of Time.’”
Kram Jr. edited and chose a collection of his father’s best work titled, “Great Men Die Twice: The Selected Works Of Mark Kram,” published in 2015.
Looking back, is Kram Jr. glad he initiated the project? “Very much so,” he said. “Few journalists have written as gorgeously as he did. Some of his sentences are pure poetry. He was quite deserving of a collection. I only wish it had been longer.”
The last time father and son saw each other was June 8, 2002 when Lennox Lewis knocked out Mike Tyson in the eighth round of their title fight with three belts on the line.
“(Dad) had done a Playboy interview with (Mike) Tyson and figured that Tyson was worthy of a book,” Kram Jr. said. “I joined him in Memphis for the fight. We had both arranged for credentials, but when we showed up in the press tent to get them, there was only one for Mark Kram. I remember it was funny. The young fellow handing out the credentials looked at Dad, then looked at me and said, ‘so there ARE two of you!’ We had a lot of fun that week in Memphis driving around and hitting the spots. But the fight was awful. Even from our seats up in the stands, it was clear that Tyson was finished. Lewis wiped the floor with him. Five days later Dad died of a heart attack back in Washington.”
What does Kram Jr. think his father would want people to most remember about him?
“Like I tend to think about Joe Frazier, a good but not a perfect man,” he said. “That is perhaps the best any of us can do.”
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Cain Sandoval KOs Mark Bernaldez in the Featured Bout at Santa Ynez
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Northern California’s Cain Sandoval remained undefeated with a knockout win over Mark Bernaldez in a super lightweight battle on Friday on a 360 Promotions card.
Sandoval (15-0, 13 KOs) of Sacramento needed four rounds to figure out tough Filipino fighter Bernaldez (25-7, 14 KOs) in front of a packed crowd at Chumash Casino in Santa Ynez.
Bernaldez had gone eight rounds against Mexico’s very tough Oscar Duarte. He showed no fear for Sandoval’s reputed power and both fired bombs at each other from the second round on.
Things turned in favor of Sandoval when he targeted the body and soon had Bernaldez in retreat. It was apparent Sandoval had discovered a weakness.
In the beginning of the fourth Sandoval fired a stiff jab to the body that buckled Bernaldez but he did not go down. And when both resumed in firing position Sandoval connected with an overhand right and down went the Filipino fighter. He was counted out by referee Rudy Barragan at 34 seconds of the round.
“I’m surprised he took my jab to the body. I respect that. I have a knockout and I’m happy about that,” Sandoval said.
Other Bouts
Popular female fighter Lupe Medina (9-0) remained undefeated with a solid victory over the determined Agustina Vazquez (4-3-2) by unanimous decision after eight rounds in a minimumweight fight between Southern Californians.
Early on Vazquez gave Medina trouble disrupting her patter with solid jabs. And when Medina overloaded with combination punches, she was laced with counters from Vazquez during the first four rounds.
Things turned around in the fifth round as Medina used a jab to keep Vazquez at a preferred distance. And when she attacked it was no more than two-punch combination and maintaining a distance.
Vazquez proved determined but discovered clinching was not a good idea as Medina took advantage and overran her with blows. Still, Vazquez looked solid. All three judges saw it 79-73 for Medina.
A battle between Southern Californian’s saw Compton’s Christopher Rios (11-2) put on the pressure all eight rounds against Eastvale’s Daniel Barrera (8-1-1) and emerged the winner by majority decision in a flyweight battle.
It was Barrera’s first loss as a pro. He never could discover how to stay off the ropes and that proved his downfall. Neither fighter was knocked down but one judge saw it 76-76, and two others 79-73 for Rios.
In a welterweight fight Gor Yeritsyan (20-1,16 KOs) scorched Luis Ramos (23-7) with a 12-punch combination the sent him to the mat in the second round. After Ramos beat the count he was met with an eight punch volley and the fight was stopped at 2:11 of the second round by knockout.
Super feather prospect Abel Mejia (7-0, 5 KOs) floored Alfredo Diaz (9-12) in the fifth round but found the Mexican fighter to be very durable in their six-round fight. Mejia caught Diaz with a left hook in the fifth round for a knockdown. But the fight resumed with all three judges scoring it 60-53 for Mejia who fights out of El Modena, Calif.
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The Return of David Alaverdian
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By TSS Special Correspondent David Harazduk — After David Alaverdian (8-0-1, 6 KOs) scored a gritty victory against a tough Nicaraguan journeyman named Enrique Irias, his plans suddenly changed. The flashy flyweight from Nahariya, Israel hoped to face even tougher opposition and then challenge for a world title within a year or so. But a prolonged illness forced David to rip up the script.
The Irias fight was over 22 months ago. On Saturday, Feb. 22, Alaverdian will be making his first appearance in the ring since that win when he faces veteran road warrior Josue “Zurdo” Morales (31-16-4, 13 KOs) at the Westgate Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. It’s the fifth promotion by Las Vegas attorney Stephen Reid whose inaugural card was at this venue on Feb. 13, 2020.
“I’m excited to come back,” Alaverdian declared.
During his preparation for Irias two years ago, Alaverdian felt fatigue after a routine six-round sparring session. “It was on April 1, 2023, about ten days before my fight. It felt like an April Fool’s joke,” he said. He came down with a sore throat, a headache, and congestion. He soon developed trouble breathing. At first, he thought his seasonal asthma had flared up, but his condition soon worsened. No matter what he did, Alaverdian could no longer take deep breaths. Fatigue continued to plague him. His heart constantly raced. Instead of breathing from his diaphragm, he was breathing from his chest. He sought out numerous doctors in the United States and in Israel.
His symptoms were finally diagnosed as Dysfunctional Breathing (DB). DB is a condition that can stem from stress and is often misdiagnosed. Its symptoms include dyspnea and tachycardia, both of which David experienced.
While receiving treatment, the Vegas-based pro went back to Israel where he coached aspiring fighters. “David’s influence on Israeli boxing is amazing, because he shows we can succeed in a big business even though we come from a small country,” said another undefeated Israeli flyweight, 20-year-old Yonatan Landman (7-0, 7 KOs). “A lot more Israelis are going to dare to succeed.”
Landman was able to work with Alaverdian during David’s return to Israel. “He is a great guy and a friend,” Landman said. “He has a lot of willingness to help, share his knowledge, and help you move forward.”
Alaverdian finally started to feel like he could compete again eight months ago. He won last year’s Israeli national amateur championship and competed in Olympic qualifiers. Now, he’s preparing to fight as a professional once again. “He doesn’t mention anything about [his breathing issues] like he did before,” his coach Cedric Ferguson said about this camp. “He’s been working like there’s no issue at all.”
It has been a whirlwind week for the 31-year-old Alaverdian. In addition to putting the finishing touches on his preparation ahead of Saturday’s comeback fight, David got married on Tuesday. His mom came over from Israel for the wedding and will stay for the fight. “It’s a good distraction,” David said of this week’s significant events. “It helps me. That way I don’t have to focus on the fight all day.”
Josue Morales, a 32 year old from Houston, hopes to play spoiler on Saturday. The crafty southpaw has never been stopped during his 52-fight career. “He’s a seasoned guy with a lot of experience,” Alaverdian said of Morales. “He knows how to move around the ring and is more of a technical boxer. He’s a tough opponent for someone who has been out of the ring for two years.”
A win Saturday night would complete a monumental week for David Alaverdian, both in and out of the ring, repairing the once-shredded script.
Doors open at the Westgate fight arena at 6:30 pm. The first bout goes at 7:00. Seven fights are scheduled including an 8-round female fight between Las Vegas light flyweight Yadira Bustillos and Argentine veteran Tamara Demarco.
NOTE: Author David Harazduk has run The Jewish Boxing Blog since 2010. You can find him at Twitter/X @JewishBoxing and Instagram.
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Two Candidates for the Greatest Fight Card in Boxing History
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Two Candidates for the Greatest Fight Card in Boxing History
Saturday’s fight card in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, topped by the rematch between Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol for undisputed light heavyweight supremacy, was being hyped as the greatest boxing card ever. That was before Daniel Dubois took ill and had to pull out of his IBF world heavyweight title defense against Joseph Parker, yielding his slot to last-minute replacement Martin Bakole.
The view from here is that the card remains in the running for the best fight card ever, top to bottom. The public didn’t view Dubois as the legitimate heavyweight champion. That distinction goes to Oleksandr Usyk.
Terms like “greatest” are, of course, subjective. Are we referring to the most attractive match-ups or the greatest array of talent, or the card that gives the most satisfaction by churning out a multiplicity of entertaining fights?
We won’t know how satisfying this card is until after the fact. We won’t know whether the talent on display was the greatest ever assembled on one night until many years have passed. Contestants such as Shakur Stevenson, Vergil Ortiz Jr, and Hamzah Sheeraz are still in their twenties (Stevenson is the oldest of the three at age 27) and it’s too soon to gauge if they will leave the sport with a great legacy.
As for which fight card in history had the deepest pool of attractive match-ups, this is a query that is amenable to an operational definition. Betting lines are a useful tool for informing us whether or not a fight warrants our attention if the likelihood of witnessing a closely-contested bout is our primary consideration.
Based on these factors, I would submit that the current leader in the race for the best card ever assembled goes to Don King’s May 7, 1994 promotion at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Six future Hall of Famers – Julio Cesar Chavez, Ricardo Lopez, Azumah Nelson, Terry Norris, Julian Jackson, and Christy Martin — were on that card, an 11-fight, eight-hour marathon with five WBC world title fights, four of which were rematches.
These were the five title fights:
140 pounds: Julio Cesar Chavez (89-1-1, 77 KOs) vs. Frankie Randall (49-2-1, 39 KOs)
Odds: Chavez 3/1 (minus-300)
154 pounds: Terry Norris (37-4, 23 KOs) vs. Simon Brown (41-2, 30 KOs)
Odds: even (11/10 and take your pick)
160 pounds: Gerald McClellan (30-2, 28 KOs) vs. Julian Jackson (48-2, 45 KOs)
Odds: McClellan 7/2 (minus-350)
130 pounds: Azumah Nelson (37-2-2, 26 KOs) vs. Jesse James Leija (27-0-2, 13 KOs)
Odds: Nelson 17/10 (minus-170)
105 pounds: Ricardo Lopez (36-0, 27 KOs) vs. Kermin Guardia (21-0, 14 KOs)
Odds: none
Results
Chavez-Randall — Julio Cesar Chavez avenged his loss to Frankie Randall, but not without controversy. An accidental clash of heads in the eighth round left Chavez with a bad gash on his forehead. Ring physician Flip Homansky would have allowed the bout to continue if that had been Chavez’s preference, but El Gran Campeon wasn’t so inclined. A WBC rule specified that in the event of a significant injury accruing from an accidental head butt, the less-damaged fighter is penalized a point. The fight went to the scorecards where Chavez won a split decision that would have been a draw without the point deduction. The crowd was overwhelmingly pro-Chavez, but the big bets were mostly on Randall and the odds got nicked down on the day of the fight.
Brown-Norris — In their first meeting in December of the previous year, Simon Brown dominated Terry Norris from the opening bell before stopping him in the fourth round. It was a massive upset. Norris was in the conversation for the top pound-for-pound fighter in the sport. In the rematch, Norris opened a slight favorite, but the late money was on Brown. And, once again, the so-called “sharps” were on the wrong side. Terry Norris, the would-be avenger, won a comfortable decision.
McClellan-Jackson — A murderous puncher, Gerald McClellan bombed out Julian Jackson in 83 seconds, or four rounds quicker than in their first engagement. Jackson was also a murderous puncher and attracted money in the sports books, lowering the price on the victorious McClellan who yet remained a solid favorite.
Nelson-Leija – WBC President Jose Sulaiman mandated this rematch after the first meeting ended in a draw after an error was found in the tabulation of one of the scorecards, overturning the original verdict which had Nelson retaining his title on a split decision. Leija thought he was robbed and was the rightful winner in the do-over, outworking Nelson to win a unanimous decision. At age 35, Azumah was getting long in the tooth.
Lopez-Guardia – Before the digital age, bookmakers didn’t trifle to post lines on bouts that on paper were egregious mismatches, save perhaps a fight of great magnitude. Guardia, the Colombian challenger, overachieved by lasting the distance in a fight with no knockdowns, but “Finito” won a lopsided decision.
A Note on Odds
Betting lines serve a useful purpose for boxing historians; they quantify the magnitude of an upset. However, quoting odds is tricky because they are fluid and vary somewhat from place to place. What this means is that two journalists can quote different odds on the same event and they both can get it right – unless there is a significant disparity. The odds quoted above are the closing lines at the MGM Grand or, at the very least, a very close approximation.
Saturday in Riyadh
One reason why tomorrow’s fight card is the best ever, said the tub-thumpers, is that the card (in its original conformation) included seven world title fights. But that’s no big deal There are so many title fights nowadays that the term “world title” has been trivialized. And what wasn’t acknowledged is that three of the title fights were of the “interim” stripe.
However – and this is a big deal — a glance at the odds informs us that tomorrow’s card is chock-full of competitive match-ups (at least on paper) and from that aspect, a blend of quality and quantity, it is a doozy of a boxing card.
The greatest boxing linemaker of my generation, now deceased, once told me that any fight where the “chalk” was less than a 3/1 favorite is essentially a “pick-‘em” fight. Yes, I know that makes no sense mathematically. However, I know what he was getting at. In a baseball game, for example, it’s very rare to find a team favored by odds of more than 3/1. In boxing, where self-serving promoters are constantly feeding us King Kong vs. Mickey Mouse, odds higher than 3/1 are the norm.
As this is being written, there are six fights on Saturday’s card where one could play the favorite without laying more than 3/1. I believe this is unprecedented. Moreover, the main event and a fascinating match-up on the undercard, Vergil Ortiz Jr vs Israil Madrimov, are virtual toss-ups with the favorites, Beterbiev and Ortiz, currently available at 5/4 (minus-125). Another very intriguing fight is the heavyweight contest between late bloomers Agit Kabayel and Zhilei Zhang which finds the less-heralded Kabayel cloaked as a small favorite. And kudos to Joseph Parker for accepting Martin Bakole when he could have held out for a lesser opponent. If Bakole is in shape (a big “if”), he will be a handful.
And so, where does tomorrow’s card rank on the list of best boxing cards ever? Right up there near the top, we would argue, and, if the bouts in large part are memorably entertaining, we would push it ahead of Don King’s May 7, 1994 extravaganza.
That’s the view from here. Feel free to dissent.
Postscript: If you plan to watch the entire card ($25.99 on DAZN for U.S. buyers), it would help to stock up on some munchies. The first fight (Joshua Buatsi vs. Callum Smith) is scheduled to kick off at 8:45 a.m. for us viewers in the Pacific Time Zone / 11:45 a.m. ET. If the show adheres tight to its schedule (no guarantee), Beterbiev and Bivol are expected to enter the ring at 3:00 p.m. PT/6:00 p.m. ET.
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