Marc Abrams is Proof That Even a Boxing PR Guy Can Be a Fighter

Published

5 years ago

September 9, 2019

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It is somewhat ironic that 15rounds.com, the boxing website owned by publicist Marc Abrams, invokes memories of champions of yesteryear and those who attempted to usurp them, rather than an era where titlists and challengers are only asked to survive the arguably lesser hell of going 12. Those nine additional minutes in the crucible of the ring sometimes served as a line of demarcation separating simple fatigue and utter exhaustion, and the kind of pain any fighter accepts as an occupational necessity and a level of agony that can make the difference between the merely well-conditioned and the fanatically determined.

The 46-year-old Abrams performs just about every task required of a boxing lifer with the exception of actually taking punches, but by any manner of assessment he has demonstrated he has already gone 15 hard rounds, many times over, in a decades-long battle within himself that he might soon be on the verge of winning.

If the third and final stage of a surgical cycle that began 10 months ago is successful in late October, Abrams is hopeful of resuming a normal life, or however normal that life is for a man who has surrendered all or parts of several diseased and malfunctioning internal organs. Until his body relays the message that he is finally all that he needs and wants to be, it will be because the bouts of incapacitating pain, waves of nausea and occasional hemorrhages necessitating blood transfusions are forever in his past. Maybe then he will be free to eat and enjoy more than a mouthful or two of food at a time without vomiting, an unwelcome development that has seen his weight precipitously plunge from 177 pounds to 138. He proudly notes, however, that he has put 1½ pounds back onto his scrawny frame, a telltale sign that his stomach is not quite as rebellious as it so long has been. Even a small step forward is a welcome development after so often being told by doctors that his quest for better health again was on hold or, worse, stuck in reverse.

“It literally has been hell,” Abrams said of the most recent period during which his plethora of medical issues, which might have cost him his life or at least significantly shortened it, took a foreboding turn. “But I am very optimistic that this next stomach surgery will be the end of it.”

Given his history of frequent hospital visits and grim prognoses, it is a wonder that Abrams has been able to mostly maintain a schedule and work ethic that would sap energy from presumably more able-bodied competitors. Although the native Philadelphian is known mostly as a publicist to the not-yet stars and never-weres, there is virtually no task in boxing he would refrain from taking if called upon. He said it is not unusual for him to put in 15 to 16 hours to his myriad duties each and every day, with perhaps a few hours taken off on Sundays.

“Before (his most recent surgery), I’d get up and start at 9 in the morning, maybe 8:30, and put in an hour before taking a shower,” he related. “I’d be in the Banner office (he has something akin to a full-time job with Philly-based promoter Art Pelullo) from 10 a.m. to maybe 5 in the afternoon, working the phones, sending out or answering emails. Whatever is needed. After that, I work on my own things or whomever I’m doing stuff for, until midnight, and often later.

“The next day, I do it all over again.”

It had always been Abrams’ hope to one day have a job in sports, although initially he believed he’d be involved in the NFL or NBA. But, he said, “I’ve always loved the big fights, when they would come on network TV. I was a big fan of Larry Holmes because all his fights were on TV, and because he was the heavyweight champion.

“I guess I caught the boxing bug even more when the Jack Newfield book (Only in America: The Life and Crimes of Don King) came out (in 1995). It had so much fascinating stuff in it, I wanted to learn more about boxing. That’s where my passion for the sport really began.”

Although Abrams has worked his share of bigger fight cards – he points out that he has done HBO, Showtime and ESPN events – he is most associated with promoters, managers and fighters who live and work in the Philly metropolitan area, the outer limits of which might extend westward to Reading, Pa., and to Atlantic City to the east. He estimates he has been associated with 50 to 75 such clients, most of whom appreciate his bulldog style although some were unwilling to reciprocate his loyalty, moving on to more established PR types as their place in the boxing pecking order rose.

“I can handle bigger shows,” Abrams stressed. “I’ve done stuff nationally and internationally. But before that you have to take pride in being kind of the main guy in your area. There are still a lot of great stories that need to be told about kids in and around Philly. OK, so maybe it isn’t the heyday that it was 20 or 25 years ago, but there still are a lot of good fights and good fighters locally. This is where I grew up and still live. I want to see local promoters and local fighters succeed and go on to the next level.”

Marshall Kauffman, president of Reading-based King’s Promotions, has worked with Abrams often and he cites him as an example of someone who never gives less than his best effort, and has not forgotten where he comes from.

“Marc has helped me tremendously by doing PR and commentating for some of my shows, and he’s been just as helpful to numerous other local promoters,” Kauffman said. “Not having Marc around would be like not having boxing around in this area. If he weren’t here, that would make for a very empty space.”

Pelullo is also effusive in his praise of Abrams, saying, “I think Marc is one of the more knowledgeable publicists in the business. He has tapes on everybody, and what he doesn’t know about somebody he can find out within 30 minutes. He is very conscientious about his job. And he tells me what he really thinks rather than what he thinks I want to hear, which is very important.”

When he lived in an apartment in Center City Philadelphia, it was a messy bachelor pad with videotapes of boxing matches stacked from floor to ceiling in the living room and almost everywhere else. Since his December 2016 marriage to the former Ronnit Zalayet, the daughter of a British mother and Israeli father who was born in England, Abrams has relocated to more spacious digs in the Queen Village section of Philly, a living space that definitely shows the signs of a woman’s touch. Ronnit has urged her husband to transfer as many of the videotapes as possible to DVDs, significantly cutting down on the clutter. And, yes, Mrs. Abrams knew what she was getting into when she said “Yes” to Marc’s proposal of marriage, which came in Verona, N.Y., when Marc was there working the Ruslan Provodnikov-John Molina Jr. fight for Banner Promotions on June 11, 2016.

“She’s gotten into (boxing) a little bit,” Marc said of Ronnit, who has dual citizenship in the U.S. and in the United Kingdom. “She knows who the local people are, and a lot of the big people, too. When Vasiliy Lomachenko was fighting Luke Campbell (on ESPN+ from London), she told me, `I’ll be watching my shows on Netflix, but call me down when the British guy comes on.’”

More importantly than any shared interest in boxing, however, Ronnit was at her husband’s side when daunting medical news of more recent vintage came flowing down like floodwaters through a ruptured levee. She provided assistance beyond moral support by scouring the Internet and helping put Marc together with an internationally known colon and rectal specialist, Dr. Feza Remzi, in New York City. It was Remzi who successfully performed an intricate, nine-hour-plus J-pouch reconstruction operation on July 18, and urologist William C. Huang, also of New York, who performed a partial nephrectomy in April to remove a four-centimeter mass from his right kidney that turned out to be malignant. There were some complications that followed such delicate surgeries, which likely was to be expected, but Abrams can now claim to see light at the end of a very long, very dark tunnel.

Not that anything can make up for years of suffering – Abrams said he was 15 when evidence of ulcerative colitis, the first of his many medical problems, became apparent – but perhaps a small gesture from the writers whom he has helped for so long might provide some measure of consolation. The Boxing Writers Association of America first presented its Courage in Overcoming Adversity Award, now co-named in honor of Bill Crawford and John McCain, in 2006. Crawford, a onetime amateur boxer, was the recipient of a Congressional Medal of Honor and Purple Heart for his battlefield heroism during World War II; McCain, a Navy fighter pilot, former Naval Academy boxer and avid fight fan, was subjected to horrific abuse as a prisoner of war in Vietnam before going on to a long tenure as a United States Senator from Arizona and 2008 bid for the presidency as the Republican nominee.

Kassim Ouma, then a recently dethroned IBF junior middleweight champion, was the first person to be recognized for the prestigious award, a testament to the horrors he had endured as a conscripted child soldier in Uganda before he defected to the U.S. By the time Ouma took the stage to accept the award, his story was fairly common knowledge in boxing circles. A year later, the second honoree was some guy named Muhammad Ali.

In all, there have been 18 persons associated with boxing who have been cited for courage in overcoming adversity. Almost without exception, all recipients had at least a modicum of name recognition with the BWAA electorate. Here’s hoping that the trials and tribulations faced and overcome by Marc Abrams, who may not be as well known to BWAA voters outside of the Philadelphia area, at least earns him a place on the ballot.

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Friday Boxing Recaps: Observations on Conlan, Eubank, Bahdi, and David Jimenez

Published

8 hours ago

March 8, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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March 7 was an unusually heavy Friday for professional boxing. The show that warranted the most ink was the all-female card in London, a tour-de-force for the super-talented Lauren Price, but there were important fights on other continents.

Brighton

Michael Conlan, who sat out all of 2024 on the heels of being stopped in three of his previous five, returned to the ring in the British seaside resort city of Brighton in a shake-off-the-rust, 8-rounder against Asad Asif Khan, a 31-year-old Indian from Calcutta making his first appearance in a British ring.

Conlan, a 2016 Olympic silver medalist who famously signed with Top Rank coming out of the amateur ranks, is now 33 years old. Against Khan, he was far from impressive, but did enough to win by a 78-74 score and lock in a match with Spain’s Cristobal Lorente, the European featherweight champion.

Conlan, who improved to 19-3 (9), absorbed a lot of punishment in those three matches that he lost. With his deep amateur background, Michael has a lot of mileage on him and he would have been smart to call it quits after his embarrassingly one-sided defeat to Luis Alberto Lopez. His frayed reflexes speak to something more than ring rust. Heading in, Khan brought a 19-5-1 record but had scored only five wins inside the distance.

Conlan vs Khan was the co-feature. In the main event, Brighton welterweight Harlem Eubank, the cousin of Chris Eubank Jr, improved to 21-0 (9 KOs) with a dominant performance over Conlan’s Belfast homie Tyrone McKenna. Eubank was credited with three knockdowns, all the result of body punches, before referee John Latham had seen enough and pulled the plug at the 2:09 mark of round 10. It was the fourth loss in his last six outings for the 35-year-old McKenna (24-6-1).

Harlem Eubank wants to fight Conor Benn next and says he is willing to wait until after his cousin “wipes Benn out.” Chris Eubank Jr vs Benn is slated for April 26 at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. The North London facility, which has a retractable roof, is the third-largest soccer stadium in England.

Toronto

Local fan favorite Lucas Bahdi and his stablemate Sara Bailey were the headliners on last night’s card at the Great Canadian Casino Resort in Toronto. The event marked the first incursion of Jake Paul’s MVP Promotions into Canada.

Bahdi, who is from Niagara Falls but trains in Toronto, burst out of obscurity in July of last year in Tampa, Florida, with a spectacular one-punch knockout of heavily-hyped Ashton “H2O” Sylva. His next fight, on the undercard of Jake Paul’s match with Mike Tyson, was less “noisy” and the same could be said of his homecoming fight with Ryan James Racaza, an undefeated (15-0) but obscure southpaw from the Philippines who was making his North American debut.

Bahdi vs Racaza was a technical fight that didn’t warm up until Bahdi produced a knockdown in round seven with a sweeping left hook, a glancing blow that appeared to land behind Racaza’s ear. The Filipino was up in a jiff, looking at the referee as if to say, “this dude just hit me with a rabbit punch.”

The judges had it 99-90, 97-92, and 96-93 for the victorious Bahdi (19-0) who was the subject of a recent profile on these pages.

Sara Bailey, a decorated amateur who competed around the world under her maiden name Sara Haghighat Joo and now holds the WBA light flyweight title, successfully defended that trinket with a lopsided decision over Cristina Navarro (6-3), a 35-year-old Spaniard who “earned” this assignment by winning a 6-round decision over an opponent with a 1-4-3 record. The judges scored the monotonous fight 99-91 across the board for Bailey who improved to 6-0 and then returned to the ring to assist her husband in Lucas Bahdi’s corner.

Also

Twenty-two-year-old super bantamweight Angel Barrientes, a Las Vegas-based Hawaii native, delivered the best performance of the night with a one-sided beatdown of Alexander Castellano whose corner mercifully stopped the contest after the seventh round as the ring doctor stood in a neutral corner chatting with the referee.

The gritty Castellano, who hails from Tonawanda, New York, brought an 11-1-2 record and hadn’t previously been stopped. A glutton for punishment, he appeared to suffer a broken orbital bone. Barrientes improved to 13-1 (8 KOs).

The show was marred by an excessive amount of fluffy gobbledygook by the TV talking heads which slowed down the action and made the promotion almost unwatchable.

Cartago, Costa Rica

Fighting in his hometown, super flyweight David Jimenez scored a lopsided 12-round decision over Nicaragua’s Keyvin Lara. The judges had it 120-108, 119-109, and 116-112.

Jimenez, now 17-1, came to the fore in July of 2022 when he upset Ricardo Sandoval in Los Angeles, winning a well-earned majority decision over a 20/1 favorite riding a 16-fight winning streak. That boosted him into a title fight with the formidable Artem Dalakian who saddled him with his lone defeat.

Jimenez’s victory over Lara was his fifth since that setback. It sets up the Costa Rican for another title fight, this time against Argentina’s Fernando Martinez who acquired the WBA 115-pound title in July with an upset of Kazuto Ioka in Japan. Lara, who unsuccessfully challenged Ioka for a belt in 2016, falls to 32-7-1.

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Price Conquers Jonas on an All-Female Card at Royal Albert Hall

Published

1 day ago

March 7, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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Ben Shalom’s BOXXER Promotions was at London’s historic Royal Albert Hall tonight with an all-female card topped by a welterweight unification fight between WBC/IBF belt-holder Natasha Jonas and WBA champion Lauren Price.

Liverpool’s Jonas, who turns 41 in June, has had a sterling career, but Father Time has caught up with her. The 30-year-old Price, an Olympic gold medalist, had faster hands, faster feet, and hit harder. The classy Jonas (16-3-1) acknowledged as much in her post-fight interview: “She beat me to the punch every time.”

The scores were 100-90, 98-92, and 98-93.

In advancing her record to 9-0 (2), Price built a strong case that she is the best fighter to come down the pike from Wales since Joe Calzaghe. As for her next bout, she hopes to fight the winner of the March 29 rematch in Las Vegas between Mikaela Mayer and Sandy Ryan. That match, with all of the meaningful welterweight hardware at stake, would be a hot ticket item if potted in Cardiff.

Semi-wind-up

Caroline Dubois staved off a late rally to successfully defend her WBC lightweight title with a majority decision over South Korea’s spunky Bo Mi Re Shin. The judges had it 98-92, 98-93, and 95-95. Although the 95-95 tally by the Korean judge was quite a stretch, Shin performed far better than the odds – Dubois was a consensus 35/1 favorite — portended.

Dubois, a 24-year-old Londoner trained by Shane McGuigan, is the sister of IBF heavyweight title-holder Daniel Dubois. Reportedly 36-3 as an amateur, she advanced her pro record to 11-0-1 (5). Heading in, Shin (18-3-3) had won nine of her previous 10 with the lone setback coming via split decision in a robust fight with Belgium’s Delfine Persoon in Belgium.

Other Bouts of Note

Kariss Artingstall returned to the ring after a 14-month absence and scored a unanimous decision over former amateur rival Raven Chapman. The scores were 98-91, 97-92, 96-93.

The prize for Artingstall, who happens to be Lauren Price’s partner, was the inaugural British female featherweight title and a potential rematch with Skye Nicolson who would relish the chance to avenge her last defeat, a loss by split decision to Attingstall in the quarterfinals of the Tokyo Olympics. Nicolson, who was part of tonight’s broadcast team, defends her title later this month in Sydney against Florida’s Tiara Brown.

It was the first 10-rounder for Artingstall (7-0). Chapman (9-2) had an uphill battle after Artingstall decked her in the second round with a straight left hand.

In a mild upset, Jasmina Zopotoczna, a UK-based Pole, won a split decision over Chloe Watson, adding Watson’s European flyweight title to her own regional trinket. One of the judges favored Watson 97-93, but each of his colleagues had it 96-95 for the Pole. Although there was no great furor, the verdict was unpopular.

Zapotoczna, who fought off her back foot, improved to 9-1. It was the first pro loss for Watson who is trained by Ricky Hatton.

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 316: Art of the Deal in Boxing and More

Published

2 days ago

March 6, 2025

David A. Avila

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So, they want to save boxing?

A group of guys with recent ties to the sport of boxing and bags of money suddenly believe they can save a sport that is older than any other sport since the dawn of mankind.

Boxing is the oldest sport.

When cavemen roamed the planet, you can believe one tribe bet another tribe their guy could whip the other guy. Thus began the sport of boxing. There was no baseball, soccer or horse racing.

Even the invention of the wheel was still a few generations away when men were duking it out with other men for sport.

Throughout history mentions of one man fighting another man without arms are written in the Tales of Ulysses and other literary references.

Boxing will never die. Period.

Here is the reason why.

Boxing requires only two men in their underwear with no weapons and no requirement of classes in jujitsu, kickboxing, wrestling or advance training facilities. You can prepare in your backyard with one heavy bag and a pair of boxing gloves. It’s simple.

MMA, on the other hand, requires money.

Boxing is for the poor. Any kid can walk into a gym and begin training. When they become adults, then they start paying to use the gym.

Don’t let people fool you and tell you “boxing is dying.”

People have been saying those same words since John L. Sullivan in the late 1800s. You can look it up.

The phrase “boxing is dying,” is said by people who want you to pay them money to save it. Kind of sounds like the guy currently sitting in the White House who is going to save America by firing Americans from their jobs and allowing Russia to take over Ukraine.

Don’t believe these people.

Boxing does not need saving.

Why would Dana White, who has stated for decades that MMA is bigger than boxing, though no MMA fighter can equal the purses of a Saul “Canelo” Alvarez or Tyson Fury, why is he involved in boxing?

There is big money to be made in boxing, especially with internet gambling sites being allowed all over the world. And boxing is popular worldwide. MMA is not.

More people know who Canelo is than UFC’s Alex Pereira.

I respect the UFC fighters. They put in hard work and battle injuries throughout their careers. But MMA is simply not as big as boxing. The purses of MMA fighters at the top level don’t come close to boxing’s top money earners.

Why did Conor McGregor, Nate Diaz and others quickly switch to boxing when called?

The money in boxing is much bigger.

Follow the money.

NYC

A rumble is planned for Times Square in New York City.

Vatos from Southern California are fighting dudes from Nevada and Brooklyn. Sounds like a script from the Gangs of New York.

Where is Leonardo DiCaprio when you need him?

Ryan “KingRy” Garcia (24-1, 20 KOs) will meet Rollie Romero (16-2, 13 KOs) in a welterweight match set for May 2, on Times Square in mid-Manhattan. This is one of three marquee bouts planned to be streamed on DAZN.

Others matched will be Arnold Barboza (32-0, 11 KOs) versus super lightweight titlist Teofimo Lopez (21-1, 13 KOs), and Devin Haney (31-0, 15 KOs) against Jose Carlos Ramirez (29-2, 18 KOs) in a welterweight contest.

This is the proposed match by The Ring magazine backed by Turki Alalshikh who, along with Golden Boy Promotions and Matchroom Boxing, is sponsoring this fight card.

It was also announced that Alalshikh, TKO Group Holdings, and Sela are forming a promotion company.

TKO owns UFC and WWE.

SoCal Fights

Southern California will be busy with boxing cards this weekend.

This Thursday, March 6, is Golden Boy Promotions with a boxing card featuring Manny Flores (19-1, 15 KOs) versus Jorge Leyva (18-3, 13 KOs) in a super bantamweight match at Fantasy Springs Casino. DAZN will stream the boxing card from Indio, California.

On Saturday, March 8, the Fox Theater in Pomona, California hosts a boxing card featuring super middleweights Ruben Cazales (10-0) vs Adam Diu Abdulhamid (18-16). Also, super featherweights Michael Bracamontes (10-2-1) meets Eugene Lagos (16-9-3) at the historic venue promoted by House of Pain Boxing.

On Saturday March 8, Elite Boxing hosts a boxing card at Salesian High in East Los Angeles featuring East L.A. native Merari Vivar (8-0) against Sarah Click (2-8-1) and several other fights.

On Saturday, March 8, an event hosted by House of Champions features top contenders Joet Gonzalez (26-4) vs Arnold Khegai (22-1-1) in a featherweight main event at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, Calif.

A Big All-Female Card in London

On Friday, March 7, the historic Royal Albert Hall in the Kensington borough of London will host an all-female card with two world title fights including a unification fight in the welterweight division.

Natasha Jonas (16-2-1) and Lauren Price (8-0) meet 10 rounds for the IBF, WBC, and WBA belts.

Jonas, 40, the current WBC and IBF titlist, recently defeated Ivana Habazin and before that edged past Mikaela Mayer in a win that could have gone the other way very easily. She will be facing Price, an Olympic gold medalist and current WBA and IBO titlist.

Price, 30, hails from Wales and has an aggressive pressure style that saw her win a battle between punchers with a third-round knockout of Colombia’s Bexcy Mateus this past December in Liverpool. Before that she defeated the always tough Jessica McCaskill.

In the co-main event, lightweights Caroline Dubois (10-0-1) and Bo Mi Re Shin (18-2-3) meet for the WBC world title.

Me Re Shin, 30, fights out of South Korea and has knockout power. She was one of only two fighters to stop Venezuela’s Ana Maria Lozano who has 38 pro fights. That says something. She lost a split decision to Delfine Persoon in Belgium. That really says something.

Dubois had two competitive fights, first, against Jessica Camara that ended in a technical draw due to a clash of heads. Before that she defeated Maira Moneo. Dubois has very good talent and is still young at 24. Is she ready for Mi Re Shin?

Times Square photo credit: JP Yim

Fights to watch:

Thurs., March 6: DAZN, Manny Flores (19-1) vs. Jorge Leyva (18-3)

Fri., March 7: free on DAZN, Lucas Bahdi (18-0) vs. Ryan James Racaza (15-0)

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