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From Child Prodigy to Elite Trainer, ex-Champ Bones Adams has had a Bumpy Ride

PART ONE OF A TWO-PART STORY — Las Vegas boxing trainer Clarence “Bones” Adams (pictured working the mitts with Amir Khan) has something in common with Tiger Woods. Both appeared on the TV show “That’s Incredible.” The show, co-hosted by former NFL quarterback Fran Tarkenton, had a five-year run (1980-84) on ABC.
Tiger hadn’t even started kindergarten when his father brought him on the show to show off his acuity at hitting golf balls into a cup. Many viewers undoubtedly wondered if this painfully shy five-year-old kid would hit his peak as a golfer before he hit puberty.
Bones Adams wasn’t as cuddly cute as Tiger when he appeared on the show, his small hands encased in oversized boxing gloves, but, of course, he was a lot older. The precocious puncher was eight.
Precocious indeed. Reportedly 176-4 as an amateur, Adams was 15 years old when he made his pro debut on April 3, 1990 in Memphis, Tennessee. In the opposite corner was Simmie Black, a veteran of 158 fights.
Black was a professional loser of the stripe that has become virtually extinct in the United States, but he was 37 years old and had swapped punches with several top-shelf fighters, and here he was matched against a 15-year-old kid with no professional boxing experience whatsoever.
The kid won a 4-round unanimous decision and several years later, at age 18, he would fight a future Hall of Famer for the bantamweight championship of the world.
Clarence Richard Adams Jr has been called Bones ever since he was a little boy. The nickname was attached to him because someone said he was all skin and bones and he embraced it because he always hated the name Clarence. He spent his formative years in Henderson, Kentucky, where his father was a truck driver until blood clots in his legs forced him to quit. New employment was hard to find. Tobacco and coal, the prime economic movers in the growth of Henderson County, were in decline.
For a time, the family lived in Smith Mills, Kentucky, in a house without electricity and running water. To help out his parents, Bones worked in the fields, picking soybeans, corn, and tobacco. Working in the fields and honing his skills as a boxer – the gym was in Evansville, Indiana, 11 miles from Henderson – left little time for school. He dropped out in the eighth grade.
“No disrespect intended,” says Bones, “but the kids in the projects in the inner cities had it easy compared to us.”
The Adams’ later moved to Detroit where they lived along 7 Mile Road, the grittiest corridor in the city. They then settled in the town of Carmi in southern Illinois (a little more than an hour’s drive from their ancestral home in Henderson) where Bones’ father, since deceased, ran pizza parlors. Bones was living in Carmi when he turned pro.
Bones brought a 26-0-1 record into his March 27, 1993 bout with IBF world bantamweight champion Orlando Canizales at Evian les Bains, France. But it was a soft 26-0-1, a record forged against no-name opponents in tank towns like Greenville, South Carolina, Saint Joseph, Missouri, and Eldorado, Illinois. At this stage of his development he had no business being in the same ring with Canizales, the pride of Laredo, Texas, who was making the 12th defense of his title and would come to be regarded in many quarters as the top bantamweight of the modern era.
“When the fight was pitched to me,” says Bones, “I was told that the venue was neutral, but when I got over there I saw people coming up to Canizales saying ‘how nice to see you again’ and I learned that one of the judges was from Texas.”
The previous year, Canizales had twice defended his title in France. The Texas judge, Ronnie Ralston, was working his fourth Canizales title fight. (Astoundingly – but hey, maybe not; this is boxing – when Canizales lost three years later to Junior “Poison” Jones in a bid for the IBF super bantamweight title, Ronnie Ralston scored the fight 119-109 for Canizales. The other judges had Jones winning by six and seven points.)
Bones was being thrown to the wolves, but he was no pushover. Canizales broke Bones’ jaw in the third round, but the kid kept plugging away. After ten frames, Canizales led by two points on all three cards; the fight still hung in the balance. But in the 11th, Bones’ father, who had no boxing experience but was working his corner, tossed in the towel.
Canizales vs Adams was held in a classy joint, the Casino Royale resort overlooking Lake Geneva, a favorite getaway for European bluebloods. This was quite a departure for Bones who was only a few years removed from scrounging through dumpsters for aluminum cans and other stuff that could be sold to a recycling center or a junk dealer. But the luxurious accommodations were no consolation. At an age when many young men are hijinking through their freshman year of college, here was Bones Adams nursing a painfully broken jaw on a long flight home across the Atlantic, a jaw that would be surgically repaired at his own expense.
In both of his next two fights, Bones dislocated his left shoulder and was forced to shut it down. With three straight losses, all inside the distance, his future looked grim. But Bones persevered and in 1995 was accorded a match in Las Vegas with Kevin Kelley on the undercard of the world lightweight title fight between Oscar De La Hoya and LA-area rival Genero “Chicanito” Hernandez.
They fought outdoors at Caesars Palace in the early evening on a swelteringly hot day. Fighting for a purse of $40,000, Bones fought the last four rounds of the 12-round fight with a badly swollen left eye that appeared to ringsiders, but not referee Mitch Halpern, to be the result of an accidental head butt. When the smoke cleared, veteran Las Vegas judge Bill Graham had it 116-112 for Bones Adams, but he was overruled by Art Lurie, another local man, and Rhode Island import Clark Sammartino who both had it 114-114 and it went into the books as a draw.
A former featherweight champion, Kevin Kelley, the Flushing Flash, was 43-1-2 going in. He was one of the great action fighters of his day, but this particular fight was rather dull. “And that tells you right there I got screwed,” says Bones. “I controlled the ring, I made him fight my fight.”
Bones would be on the wrong side of another questionable decision in an even bigger fight, but prior to that disappointment, all of his hard work finally paid off and he experienced the highest high of his boxing career.
On March 4, 2000, at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, Adams deposed WBA super bantamweight champion Nestor Garza. Although he broke his hand in the eighth round, he won a wide decision.
“I was having a lot of aches and pains,” Bones recalled, “but when I woke up on the morning of the fight, I felt great, I felt very strong. I called all my friends and told them to bet on me. I had a lot of friends that night.”
Bones says that going into the fight he had only $980 to his name. He bet $900 on himself and says he secured 8/1 odds. (In truth, Garza wasn’t quite that big a favorite. In boxing, upsets invariably become bigger upsets in the re-telling and with the passage of time.)
After two successful title defenses, Bones returned to Mandalay Bay to oppose Paulie Ayala. Bones held the WBA 122-pound title, Ayala was that organization’s 118-pound champion, and yet there was no title at stake, save that of a fringe organization (we wouldn’t even try to explain how that came about – hey, this is boxing).
Title or no title, the fight created a lot of buzz. Wladimir Klitschko’s WBO title defense against Charles Shufford was relegated to the undercard. And the bout was a humdinger that went to the scorecards after 12 nip-and-tuck rounds. Bones won the last round on the card of all three judges, but that wasn’t sufficient to get him over the hump. Ayala won a split decision.
Bones didn’t bring the same fire into his rematch with Paulie Ayala who was returned a clear winner after 12 rounds. He felt that he deserved no less than a draw in his next fight, a 12-round featherweight contest with tough Guty Espadas Jr, but that fight too ended with Bones on the wrong side of a split decision. For this bout, Bones had a 12-week camp in Big Bear and felt that he had over-trained.
He would go on to have six more fights for small purses before calling it quits, retiring with a record of 44-7-4. When he left the sport, he wasn’t yet 26 years old, but he had a lot of mileage on his odometer – as a pro, he had answered the bell for 344 rounds – and it was time to say goodbye.
Bones concedes that he began to make some bad choices following his first loss to Paulie Ayala, for example using recreational drugs as a crutch to uplift his spirits. He then made a whopper of a bad choice when he accepted an offer of employment from the predatory Charles Horky. To be continued……
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Floyd Mayweather has Another Phenom and his name is Curmel Moton

Floyd Mayweather has Another Phenom and his name is Curmel Moton
In any endeavor, the defining feature of a phenom is his youth. Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Bryce Harper was a phenom. He was on the radar screen of baseball’s most powerful player agents when he was 14 years old.
Curmel Moton, who turns 19 in June, is a phenom. Of all the young boxing stars out there, wrote James Slater in July of last year, “Curmel Moton is the one to get most excited about.”
Moton was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. His father Curtis Moton, a barber by trade, was a big boxing fan and specifically a big fan of Floyd Mayweather Jr. When Curmel was six, Curtis packed up his wife (Curmel’s stepmom) and his son and moved to Las Vegas. Curtis wanted his son to get involved in boxing and there was no better place to develop one’s latent talents than in Las Vegas where many of the sport’s top practitioners came to train.
Many father-son relationships have been ruined, or at least frayed, by a father’s unrealistic expectations for his son, but when it came to boxing, the boy was a natural and he felt right at home in the gym.
The gym the Motons patronized was the Mayweather Boxing Club. Curtis took his son there in hopes of catching the eye of the proprietor. “Floyd would occasionally drop by the gym and I was there so often that he came to recognize me,” says Curmel. What he fails to add is that the trainers there had Floyd’s ear. “This kid is special,” they told him.
It costs a great deal of money for a kid to travel around the country competing in a slew of amateur boxing tournaments. Only a few have the luxury of a sponsor. For the vast majority, fund raisers such as car washes keep the wheels greased.
Floyd Mayweather stepped in with the financial backing needed for the Motons to canvas the country in tournaments. As an amateur, Curmel was — take your pick — 156-7 or 144-6 or 61-3 (the latter figure from boxrec). Regardless, at virtually every tournament at which he appeared, Curmel Moton was the cock of the walk.
Before the pandemic, Floyd Mayweather Jr had a stable of boxers he promoted under the banner of “The Money Team.” In talking about his boxers, Floyd was understated with one glaring exception – Gervonta “Tank” Davis, now one of boxing’s top earners.
When Floyd took to praising Curmel Moton with the same effusive language, folks stood up and took notice.
Curmel made his pro debut on Sept. 30, 2023, at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on the undercard of the super middleweight title fight between Canelo Alvarez and Jermell Charlo. After stopping his opponent in the opening round, he addressed a flock of reporters in the media room with Floyd standing at his side. “I felt ready,” he said, “I knew I had Floyd behind me. He believes in me. I had the utmost confidence going into the fight. And I went in there and did what I do.”
Floyd ventured the opinion that Curmel was already a better fighter than Leigh Wood, the reigning WBA world featherweight champion who would successfully defend his belt the following week.
Moton’s boxing style has been described as a blend of Floyd Mayweather and Tank Davis. “I grew up watching Floyd, so it’s natural I have some similarities to him,” says Curmel who sparred with Tank in late November of 2021 as Davis was preparing for his match with Isaac “Pitbull” Cruz. Curmell says he did okay. He was then 15 years old and still in school; he dropped out as soon as he reached the age of 16.
Curmel is now 7-0 with six KOs, four coming in the opening round. He pitched an 8-round shutout the only time he was taken the distance. It’s not yet official, but he returns to the ring on May 31 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas where Caleb Plant and Jermall Charlo are co-featured in matches conceived as tune-ups for a fall showdown. The fight card will reportedly be free for Amazon Prime Video subscribers.
Curmel’s presumptive opponent is Renny Viamonte, a 28-year-old Las Vegas-based Cuban with a 4-1-1 (2) record. It will be Curmel’s first professional fight with Kofi Jantuah the chief voice in his corner. A two-time world title challenger who began his career in his native Ghana, the 50-year-old Jantuah has worked almost exclusively with amateurs, a recent exception being Mikaela Mayer.
It would seem that the phenom needs a tougher opponent than Viamonte at this stage of his career. However, the match is intriguing in one regard. Viamonte is lanky. Listed at 5-foot-11, he will have a seven-inch height advantage.
Keeping his weight down has already been problematic for Moton. He tipped the scales at 128 ½ for his most recent fight. His May 31 bout, he says, will be contested at 135 and down the road it’s reasonable to think he will blossom into a welterweight. And with each bump up in weight, his short stature will theoretically be more of a handicap.
For fun, we asked Moton to name the top fighter on his pound-for-pound list. “[Oleksandr] Usyk is number one right now,” he said without hesitation,” great footwork, but guys like Canelo, Crawford, Inoue, and Bivol are right there.”
It’s notable that there isn’t a young gun on that list. Usyk is 38, a year older than Crawford; Inoue is the pup at age 32.
Moton anticipates that his name will appear on pound-for-pound lists within the next two or three years. True, history is replete with examples of phenoms who flamed out early, but we wouldn’t bet against it.
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Arne’s Almanac: The First Boxing Writers Assoc. of America 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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