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Takeaways from Last Week’s ‘Criminal’ Knockout in Ekaterinburg

Earlier this month, 365 boxers from 78 countries gathered in Ekaterinburg, Russia for the 2019 AIBA men’s world championships. Prior to 2016, this annual event was restricted to amateurs but the rules have been loosened and now a few pros and semi-pros are sprinkled among the entrants.
In the United States, amateur boxing, except in an Olympics year, is about as mainstream as professional handball. But this year there was an incident that caused a great brouhaha, giving the tournament a much larger presence, although not in the way the organizers had hoped.
In a quarter-final match at super heavyweight, Bakhodir Jalolov scored a vicious first round knockout over Richard Torrez Jr of the USA. A combination climaxed by a devastating left hook sent Torrez crashing to the canvas where he lay flat on his back, out cold. He was stretchered out of the ring and taken to a hospital to be evaluated.
Jalolov (pictured) is a 25-year-old, six-foot-seven southpaw from Uzbekistan. A 2016 Olympian, he turned pro in May of last year at the Foxwoods Resort in Connecticut. He’s had six professional fights, all in the Unites States, winning all by knockout, three in the very first round. His U.S. promoter is Lou DiBella.
WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman was indignant. “Brutal and criminal to allow a professional boxer Jalolov from Russia with 6-0 as a pro to fight outclassed, outweighed and far smaller USA 20-year-old amateur Torrez AIBA world championship in Russia,” Sulaiman howled in a tweet that would be widely circulated on the web.
It should be noted that there is no love lost between AIBA and the superintendents of professional boxing’s world sanctioning bodies. Alterations muscled into practice by C.K. Wu, the Taiwanese architect who served as president of AIBA from 2006 until he was forced out in 2017, inflamed what was always a tenuous relationship. (Wu officially resigned, but would have been impeached if he had not done so.)
Wu believed that the best boxers in every country, whether amateur or professional, should be allowed to compete in the Olympics, similar to basketball. And he succeeded in opening the Olympics to professional fighters. But the honchos at the world sanctioning bodies perceived an ulterior motive. They believed that Wu was bursting with visions of grandeur and merely looking to consolidate his power by knotting all boxers, amateur and pro, under the AIBA umbrella, his personal fiefdom, as it were.
Several bloggers who commented on Sulaiman’s tweet noted that Richard Torrez is no spring chicken, notwithstanding his tender age. Torrez (read more about him here) racked up a first-place finish in virtually every national tournament he has entered going back to 2013 and has fared well in international competition, finishing first in a tournament in Bulgaria and two tournaments in Germany. He wasn’t favored to win the super heavyweight competition in Ekaterinburg — that distinction went to Jalolov, the eventual winner – but Torrez was seeded third in his bracket and none of his teammates were seeded any higher.
Heading into the world championships, no team looked as strong as Cuba. The Cuban delegation included four medalists from the 2016 Rio games including gold medal winners Julio Cesar La Cruz, a 30-year-old light heavyweight, and Arlen Lopez, a 26-year-old middleweight. But Cuba left Ekaterinburg with only three medals; one gold (lightweight Andy Cruz), one silver (featherweight Lazaro Alvarez, a two-time OIympic bronze medalist), and one bronze (La Cruz).
The Eastern bloc countries of Uzbekistan, Russia, and Kazakhstan dominated the affair, winning seven of the eight gold medals. (The number of Olympic weight classes for male boxers was recently truncated from 10 to eight. Gone are the bantamweight/123 pounds and light welterweight/141 pounds classifications. Concomitantly, the number of weight classes for female boxers was increased from three to five.)
Uzbekistan, a Central Asian country, home to about 33 million people, topped the leaderboard with five medals, including three gold. The performance echoed the country’s surprising performance in Rio where Uzbekistan won the team title, emerging with seven medals – three gold, two silver, and two bronze. This from a country that had won only four medals total (one gold, three bronze) in the five prior Olympiads in which it participated.
Step aside Cuba, there’s a new sheriff in town.
The U.S. won only one medal in Ekaterinburg, that a silver medal won by Keyshawn Davis, a 20-year-old lightweight from Norfolk, Virginia. One might infer, considering this paltry haul, that the U.S. Olympic boxing team is doomed to another shabby showing when the summer games come around again in Tokyo next year. But that assessment may be premature.
The United States brought only seven boxers to Ekaterinburg; the featherweight hole was empty. For whatever reasons, three of America’s top-ranked amateurs – heavyweight Jared Anderson, light heavyweight Rahim Gonzalez, and welterweight Freudis Rojas – did not make the trip. Also, the locale obviously favored teams from Eastern bloc countries to the detriment of teams from other parts of the world. In few other sports is scoring as subjective as in amateur boxing and throughout its history hometown decisions have been the norm.
Richard Torrez, thankfully, is okay. He told his fans in an instagram posting that all tests came back perfect. But one has to wonder if this incident will affect his psyche.
If Torrez were to go on to win a gold medal in Tokyo, he would command the largest signing bonus in history when he turned pro. What promoter wouldn’t want to latch hold of this well-mannered, clean-cut kid from Tulare, California, who was the valedictorian of his high school class?
Another takeaway from the Ekaterinburg tournament concerns Bakhodir Jalolov. A big star in Uzbekistan with reportedly 175,000 followers on social media, he was yet a virtual unknown in the western world until his smashing knockout of Torrez lit up the internet. Now folks are wondering just how good he may be.
Those in the know, I am told, believe that he is special.
Check out more boxing news on video at The Boxing Channel
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Avila Perspective, Chap. 322: Super Welter Week in SoCal

Two below-the-radar super welterweight stars show off their skills this weekend from different parts of Southern California.
One in particular, Charles Conwell, co-headlines a show in Oceanside against a hard-hitting Mexican while another super welter star Sadriddin Akhmedov faces another Mexican hitter in Commerce.
Take your pick.
The super welterweight division is loaded with talent at the moment. If Terence Crawford remained in the division he would be at the top of the class, but he is moving up several weight divisions.
Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) faces Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs) a tall knockout puncher from Los Mochis at the Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, Calif. on Saturday April 19. DAZN will stream the Golden Boy Promotions card that also features undisputed flyweight champion Gabriela Fundora. We’ll get to her later.
Conwell might be the best super welterweight out there aside from the big dogs like Vergil Ortiz, Serhii Bohachuk and Sebastian Fundora.
If you are not familiar with Conwell he comes from Cleveland, Ohio and is one of those fighters that other fighters know about. He is good.
He has the James “Lights Out” Toney kind of in-your-face-style where he anchors down and slowly deciphers the opponent’s tools and then takes them away piece by piece. Usually it’s systematic destruction. The kind you see when a skyscraper goes down floor by floor until it’s smoking rubble.
During the Covid days Conwell fought two highly touted undefeated super welters in Wendy Toussaint and Madiyar Ashkeyev. He stopped them both and suddenly was the boogie man of the super welterweight division.
Conwell will be facing Mexico’s taller Garcia who likes to trade blows as most Mexican fighters prefer, especially those from Sinaloa. These guys will be firing H bombs early.
Fundora
Co-headlining the Golden Boy card is Gabriela Fundora (15-0, 7 KOs) the undisputed flyweight champion of the world. She has all the belts and Mexico’s Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1, 3 KOs) wants them.
Gabriela Fundora is the sister of Sebastian Fundora who holds the men’s WBC and WBO super welterweight world titles. Both are tall southpaws with power in each hand to protect the belts they accumulated.
Six months ago, Fundora met Argentina’s Gabriela Alaniz in Las Vegas to determine the undisputed flyweight champion. The much shorter Alaniz tried valiantly to scrap with Fundora and ran into a couple of rocket left hands.
Mexico’s Badillo is an undefeated flyweight from Mexico City who has battled against fellow Mexicans for years. She has fought one world champion in Asley Gonzalez the current super flyweight world titlist. They met years ago with Badillo coming out on top.
Does Badillo have the skill to deal with the taller and hard-hitting Fundora?
When a fighter has a six-inch height advantage like Fundora, it is almost impossible to out-maneuver especially in two-minute rounds. Ask Alaniz who was nearly decapitated when she tried.
This will be Badillo’s first pro fight outside of Mexico.
Commerce Casino
Kazakhstan’s Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0, 13 KOs) is another dangerous punching super welterweight headlining a 360 Promotions card against Mexico’s Elias Espadas (23-6, 16 KOs) on Saturday at the Commerce Casino.
UFC Fight Pass will stream the 360 Promotions card of about eight bouts.
Akhmedov is another Kazakh puncher similar to the great Gennady “GGG” Golovkin who terrorized the middleweight division for a decade. He doesn’t have the same polish or dexterity but doesn’t lack pure punching power.
It’s another test for the super welterweight who is looking to move up the ladder in the very crowded 154-pound weight division. 360 Promotions already has a top contender in Ukraine’s Serhii Bohachuk who nearly defeated Vergil Ortiz a year ago.
Could Bohachuk and Akhmedov fight each other if nothing else materializes?
That’s a question for another day.
Fights to Watch
Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. Charles Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) vs. Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs); Gabriela Fundora (15-0) vs Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1).
Sat. UFC Fight Pass 6 p.m. Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0) vs Elias Espadas (23-6).
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TSS Salutes Thomas Hauser and his Bernie Award Cohorts

The Boxing Writers Association of America has announced the winners of its annual Bernie Awards competition. The awards, named in honor of former five-time BWAA president and frequent TSS contributor Bernard Fernandez, recognize outstanding writing in six categories as represented by stories published the previous year.
Over the years, this venerable website has produced a host of Bernie Award winners. In 2024, Thomas Hauser kept the tradition alive. A story by Hauser that appeared in these pages finished first in the category “Boxing News Story.” Titled “Ryan Garcia and the New York State Athletic Commission,” the story was published on June 23. You can read it HERE.
Hauser also finished first in the category of “Investigative Reporting” for “The Death of Ardi Ndembo,” a story that ran in the (London) Guardian. (Note: Hauser has owned this category. This is his 11th first place finish for “Investigative Reporting”.)
Thomas Hauser, who entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the class of 2019, was honored at last year’s BWAA awards dinner with the A.J. Leibling Award for Outstanding Boxing Writing. The list of previous winners includes such noted authors as W.C. Heinz, Budd Schulberg, Pete Hamill, and George Plimpton, to name just a few.
The Leibling Award is now issued intermittently. The most recent honorees prior to Hauser were Joyce Carol Oates (2015) and Randy Roberts (2019).
Roberts, a Distinguished Professor of History at Purdue University, was tabbed to write the Hauser/Leibling Award story for the glossy magazine for BWAA members published in conjunction with the organization’s annual banquet. Regarding Hauser’s most well-known book, his Muhammad Ali biography, Roberts wrote, “It is nearly impossible to overestimate the importance of the book to our understanding of Ali and his times.” An earlier book by Hauser, “The Black Lights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing,” garnered this accolade: “Anyone who wants to understand boxing today should begin by reading ‘The Black Lights’.”
A panel of six judges determined the Bernie Award winners for stories published in 2024. The stories they evaluated were stripped of their bylines and other identifying marks including the publication or website for which the story was written.
Other winners:
Boxing Event Coverage: Tris Dixon
Boxing Column: Kieran Mulvaney
Boxing Feature (Over 1,500 Words): Lance Pugmire
Boxing Feature (Under 1,500 Words): Chris Mannix
The Dixon, Mulvaney, and Pugmire stories appeared in Boxing Scene; the Mannix story in Sports Illustrated.
The Bernie Award recipients will be honored at the forthcoming BWAA dinner on April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in the heart of Times Square. (For more information, visit the BWAA website). Two days after the dinner, an historic boxing tripleheader will be held in Times Square, the logistics of which should be quite interesting. Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney, and Teofimo Lopez share top billing.
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Mekhrubon Sanginov, whose Heroism Nearly Proved Fatal, Returns on Saturday

To say that Mekhrubon Sanginov is excited to resume his boxing career would be a great understatement. Sanginov, ranked #9 by the WBA at 154 pounds before his hiatus, last fought on July 8, 2022.
He was in great form before his extended leave, having scored four straight fast knockouts, advancing his record to 13-0-1. Had he remained in Las Vegas, where he had settled after his fifth pro fight, his career may have continued on an upward trajectory, but a trip to his hometown of Dushanbe, Tajikistan, turned everything haywire. A run-in with a knife-wielding bully nearly cost him his life, stalling his career for nearly three full years.
Sanginov was exiting a restaurant in Dushanbe when he saw a man, plainly intoxicated, harassing another man, an innocent bystander. Mekhrubon intervened and was stabbed several times with a long knife. One of the puncture wounds came perilously close to puncturing his heart.
“After he stabbed me, I ran after him and hit him and caught him to hold for the police,” recollects Sanginov. “There was a lot of confusion when the police arrived. At first, the police were not certain what had happened.
“By the time I got to the hospital, I had lost two liters of blood, or so I was told. After I was patched up, one of the surgeons said to me, ‘Give thanks to God because he gave you a second life.’ It is like I was born a second time.”
“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have happened in any city,” he adds. (A story about the incident on another boxing site elicited this comment from a reader: “Good man right there. World would be a better place if more folk were willing to step up when it counts.”)
Sanginov first laced on a pair of gloves at age 10 and was purportedly 105-14 as an amateur. Growing up, the boxer he most admired was Roberto Duran. “Muhammad Ali will always be the greatest and [Marvin] Hagler was great too, but Duran was always my favorite,” he says.
During his absence from the ring, Sanginov married a girl from Tajikistan and became a father. His son Makhmud was born in Las Vegas and has dual citizenship. “Ideally,” he says, “I would like to have three more children. Two more boys and the last one a daughter.”
He also put on a great deal of weight. When he returned to the gym, his trainer Bones Adams was looking at a cruiserweight. But gradually the weight came off – “I had to give up one of my hobbies; I love to eat,” he says – and he will be resuming his career at 154. “Although I am the same weight as before, I feel stronger now. Before I was more of a boy, now I am a full-grown man,” says Sanginov who turned 29 in February.
He has a lot of rust to shed. Because of all those early knockouts, he has answered the bell for only eight rounds in the last four years. Concordantly, his comeback fight on Saturday could be described as a soft re-awakening. Sanginov’s opponent Mahonri Montes, an 18-year pro from Mexico, has a decent record (36-10-2, 25 KOs) but has been relatively inactive and is only 1-3-1 in his last five. Their match at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, California, is slated for eight rounds.
On May 10, Ardreal Holmes (17-0) faces Erickson Lubin (26-2) on a ProBox card in Kissimmee, Florida. It’s an IBF super welterweight title eliminator, meaning that the winner (in theory) will proceed directly to a world title fight.
Sanginov will be watching closely. He and Holmes were scheduled to meet in March of 2022 in the main event of a ShoBox card on Showtime. That match fell out when Sanginov suffered an ankle injury in sparring.
If not for a twist of fate, that may have been Mekhrubon Sanginov in that IBF eliminator, rather than Ardreal Holmes. We will never know, but one thing we do know is that Mekhrubon’s world title aspirations were too strong to be ruined by a knife-wielding bully.
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